“There are more important things than saving men’s bodies. You think that, don’t you?” he asked. Joan thought. “It’s curious,” she said, “one so seldom hears of anybody being born on Christmas Day.”!

Joan’s present lay on the table near to her, as if she had just folded it and placed it there: the little cap and the fine robe of lawn: as if for a king’s child. “The difficulty I have always been up against,” explained her father, “has been their suspicion. ‘What’s the cunning old rascal up to now? What’s his little game?’ That is always what I have felt they were thinking to themselves whenever I have wanted to do anything for them. It isn’t anything he says to them. It seems to be just he, himself.”

“Hanged if I can see how we are going to get out of it,” he answered Joan cheerfully. “The moment there is any threat of war, it becomes a point of honour with every nation to do nothing to avoid it. I remember my old duelling days. The quarrel may have been about the silliest trifle imaginable. A single word would have explained the whole thing away. But to utter it would have stamped one as a coward. This Egyptian Tra-la-la! It isn’t worth the bones of a single grenadier, as our friends across the Rhine would say. But I expect, before it’s settled, there will be men’s bones sufficient, bleaching on the desert, to build another Pyramid. It’s so easily started: that’s the devil of it. A mischievous boy can throw a lighted match into a powder magazine, and then it becomes every patriot’s business to see that it isn’t put out. I hate war. It accomplishes nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before. But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon. Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do: it’s our opportunity. There’s some excuse for us. But these men—Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the Ménades of the Commune. They care nothing if the whole of Europe blazes. They cannot personally get harmed whatever happens. It’s fun to them.” And suddenly a great peace came to her. One was not alone in the fight, God was with us: the great Comrade. The evil and the cruelty all round her: she was no longer afraid of it. God was coming. Beyond the menace of the passing day, black with the war’s foul aftermath of evil dreams and hatreds, she saw the breaking of the distant dawn. The devil should not always triumph. God was gathering His labourers. What was she to do? Drag the woman back to life against her will—lead her back to him to be a chain about his feet until the end? Then leave him to fight the battle alone?