EX-PRES.  Yes.  It was a horrible thing in any case—­disproportionate, like most other acts of war—­and it did immeasurable harm to those who thought to benefit.  But this—­I still only guess—­might do too much good—­bring things a little nearer to proportion again, which the Treaty did not try to do....  What I’ve been realising these last two years is a terrible thing.  You go to war, you get up to it from your knees—­God driving you to it—­unable, yes, unable to do else.  Your will is to do right, your cause is just, you are a united nation, a people convinced, glad, selfless, with hearts heroic and clean.  And then war takes hold of it, and it all changes under your eyes; you see the heart of your people becoming fouled, getting hard, self-righteous, revengeful.  Your cause remains, in theory, what it was at the beginning; but it all goes to the Devil.  And the Devil makes on it a pile that he can make no otherwise—­because of the virtue that is in it, the love, the beauty, the heroism, the giving-up of so much that man’s heart desires.  That’s where he scores!  Look at all that valiance, that beauty of life gone out to perish for a cause it knows to be right; think of the generosity of that giving by the young men; think of the faithful courage of the women who steel themselves to let them go; think of the increase of spirit and selflessness which everywhere rises to meet the claim.  All over the land which goes to war that is happening (and in the enemy’s land it is the same), making war a sacred and a holy thing.  And having got it so sanctified, then the Devil can do with it almost what he likes.  That’s what he has done, Tumulty.  If angels led horses by the bridle at the Marne (as a pious legend tells), at Versailles the Devil had his muzzled oxen treading out the corn.  And of those—­I was one!  Yes; war muzzles you.  You cannot tell the truth; if you did, it wouldn’t be believed.  And so, finally, comes peace; and over that, too, the Devil runs up his flag—­cross-bones and a skull.

TUMULTY (struggling in the narrow path between wrong and right).  But what else, Governor, is your remedy?  We had to go to war; we were left with no choice in the matter.

EX-PRES.  No, we had no choice.  And what others had any choice?—­ what people, I mean?  But that is what everyone—­once we were at war—­ refused to remember.  And so we cried “Lusitania!” against thousands of men who had no choice in the matter at all.  Remedy?  There’s only one.  Somehow we must get men to believe that Christ wasn’t a mad idealist when He preached His Sermon on the Mount; that what He showed for the world’s salvation then was not a sign only, but the very Instrument itself.  We’ve got to make men see that there’s something in human nature waiting to respond to a new law.  There are two things breeding in the world—­love and hatred; breeding the one against the other.  And there’s fear making hatred breed fast, and there’s fear making love breed slow.  Even as things now are, it has managed—­it has just managed to keep pace; but only just.  If men were not afraid—­Love would win.