“I would like to go back,” she said. “You think of God as of a great King,” he said, “a Ruler who orders all things: who could change all things in the twinkling of an eye. You see the cruelty and the wrong around you. And you say to yourselves: ‘He has ordered it. If He would, He could have willed it differently.’ So that in your hearts you are angry with Him. How could it be otherwise? What father, loving his children, would see them suffer wrong, when by stretching out a hand he could protect them: turn their tears to gladness? What father would see his children doing evil to one another and not check them: would see them following ways leading to their destruction, and not pluck them back? If God has ordered all things, why has He created evil, making His creatures weak and sinful? Does a father lay snares for his children: leading them into temptation: delivering them unto evil?”!

“Perhaps,” she added, “the helpmate theory was intended to apply only to our bodies. There was nothing said about our souls. Perhaps God doesn’t have to work in pairs. Perhaps we were meant to stand alone.” It could be done. She felt it. If only one could summon up the needful brutality. If only one could stifle that still, small voice of Pity.

“Thanks,” said Mrs. Phillips. “You see, as the wife of a public man, I get so little time for study.” “I don’t suppose it does: not directly,” answered Mrs. Denton. “But it helps them to establish their position and get a tighter hold upon the public. War does pay the newspaper in the long run. The daily newspaper lives on commotion, crime, lawlessness in general. If people no longer enjoyed reading about violence and bloodshed half their occupation, and that the most profitable half would be gone. It is the interest of the newspaper to keep alive the savage in human nature; and war affords the readiest means of doing this. You can’t do much to increase the number of gruesome murders and loathsome assaults, beyond giving all possible advertisement to them when they do occur. But you can preach war, and cover yourself with glory, as a patriot, at the same time.” “But the people who can get harmed,” argued Joan. “The men who will be dragged away from their work, from their business, used as ‘cannon fodder.’”