At the tea table they found General Punnit discoursing on war, and giving “idealists” what idealists usually get.  The General believed in war; he pressed the biological argument, did not flinch when Mr. Naylor dubbed him the “British Bernhardi,” and invoked the support of “these medical gentleman” (this with a smile at Doctor Mary’s expense) for his point of view.  War tested, proved, braced, hardened; it was nature’s crucible; it was the antidote to softness and sentimentality; it was the vindication of the strong, the elimination of the weak.

“I suppose there’s a lot in all that, sir,” said Alec Naylor, “but I don’t think the effect on one’s character is always what you say.  I think I’ve come out of this awful business a good deal softer than I went in.”  He laughed in an apologetic way.  “More, more sentimental, if you like, with more feeling, don’t you know, for human life, and suffering, and so on.  I’ve seen a great many men killed, but the sight hasn’t made me any more ready to kill men.  In fact, quite the reverse.”  He smiled again.  “Really sometimes, for a row of pins, I’d have turned conscientious objector.”

Mrs. Naylor looked apprehensively at the General:  would he explode?  No, he took it quite quietly.  “You’re a man who can afford to say it, Alec,” he remarked, with a nod that was almost approving.

Naylor looked affectionately at his son and turned to Beaumaroy.  “And what’s the war done to you?” he asked.  And this question did draw from the General, if not an explosion, at least a rather contemptuous smile:  Beaumaroy had earned no right to express opinions!

But express one he did, and with his habitual air of candor.  “I believe it’s destroyed every, scruple I ever had!”

“Mr. Beaumaroy!” exclaimed his hostess, scandalized; while the two girls, Cynthia and Gertie, laughed.

“I mean it.  Can you see human life treated as dirt, absolutely as cheap as dirt, for three years, and come out thinking it worth anything?  Can you fight for your own hand, right or wrong?  Oh, yes, right or wrong, in the end, and it’s no good blinking it.  Can you do that for three years in war, and then hesitate to fight for your own hand, right or wrong, in peace?  Who really cares for right or wrong, anyhow?”

A pause ensued—­rather an uncomfortable pause.  There was a raw sincerity in Beaumaroy’s utterance that made it a challenge.

“I honestly think we did care about the rights and wrongs—­we in England,” said Naylor.

“That was certainly so at the beginning,” Irechester agreed.

Beaumaroy took him up smartly.  “Aye, at the beginning.  But what about when our blood got up?  What then?  Would we, in our hearts, rather have been right and got a licking, or wrong and given one?”

“A searching question!” mused old Naylor.  “What say you, Tom Punnit?”

“It never occurred to me to put the question,” the General answered brusquely.