“Norgate, you reprobate!”

“Hebblethwaite!”

The latter passed his arm through the young man’s and led him towards the club steps.

“Come in and have a drink,” he invited.  “I am just up from the House.  I do wish you could get some of your military friends to stop worrying us, Norgate.  Two hours to-night have been absolutely wasted because they would talk National Service and heckle us about the territorials.”

“I’ll have the drink, although heaven knows I don’t need any!” Norgate replied.  “As for the rest, I am all on the side of the hecklers.  You ought to know that.”

They drew two easy-chairs together in a corner of the great, deserted smoking-room, and Hebblethwaite ordered the whiskies and sodas.

“Yes,” he remarked, “I forgot.  You are on the other side, aren’t you?  I haven’t a word to say against the navy.  We spend more money than is necessary upon it, and I stick out for economy whenever I can.  But as regards the army, my theory is that it is useless.  It’s only a temptation to us to meddle in things that don’t concern us.  The navy is sufficient to defend these shores, if any one were foolish enough to wish to attack us.  If we need an army at all, we should need one ten times the size, but we don’t.  Nature has seen to that.  Yet tonight, when I was particularly anxious to get on with some important domestic legislation, we had to sit and listen to hours of prosy military talk, the possibilities of this and that.  They don’t realise, these brain-fogged ex-military men, that we are living in days of common sense.  Before many years have passed, war will belong to the days of romance.”

“For a practical politician, Hebblethwaite,” Norgate pronounced, “you have some of the rottenest ideas I ever knew.  You know perfectly well that if Germany attacked France, we are almost committed to chip in.  We couldn’t sit still, could we, and see Calais and Boulogne, Dieppe and Ostend, fortified against us?”

“If Germany should attack France!” Hebblethwaite repeated.  “If Prussia should send an expeditionary force to Cornwall, or the Siamese should declare themselves on the side of the Ulster men!  We must keep in politics to possibilities that are reasonable.”

“Take another view of the same case, then,” Norgate continued.  “Supposing Germany should violate Belgium’s independence?”

“You silly idiot!” Hebblethwaite exclaimed, as he took a long draught of his whisky and soda, lit a cigar, and leaned back in his chair, “the neutrality of Belgium is guaranteed by a treaty, actually signed by Germany!”

“Supposing she should break her treaty?” Norgate persisted.  “I told you what I heard in the train the other night.  It isn’t for nothing that that sort of work is going on.”

Hebblethwaite shook his head.

“You are incorrigible, Norgate!  Germany is one of the Powers of Europe undoubtedly possessing a high sense of honour and rectitude of conduct.  If any nation possesses a national conscience, and an appreciation of national ethics, they do.  Germany would be less likely than any nation in the world to break a treaty.”