This one he had heard on a late Sunday afternoon when he sat, contrary to a municipal ordinance of Newbern, in the back room of Herman Vielhaber, with certain officials sworn to uphold that ordinance, who drank beer and talked largely about what we should do; for it had then become shockingly apparent that the phrase about our being too proud to fight had been, in its essential meaning, misleading.  Dave Cowan, citizen of the world and student of its structure, physical and social, had proved that war, however regrettable, was perhaps never to be avoided; that in any event one of the best means to avoid it was to be known for your fighting ways.  Anyway, war was but an incident in human progress.

Dave’s hair had thinned in the years of his wandering to see a man at Seattle or New Orleans, and he now wore spectacles, without which he could no longer have enlarged his comprehension of cosmic values, for his latest Library of Universal Knowledge was printed in very small type.  Dave said that since the chemicals had got together to form life everything had lived on something else, and the best livers had always been the best killers.  He did not pretend to justify the plan, but there it was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organism preying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying to swallow the world.  Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but these pacifists would keep us out of war yet.  Doctor Purdy, with whom he had finished a game of pinochle—­Herman Vielhaber had lately been unable to keep his mind on the game—­set down his beer stein in an authoritative manner, having exploded with rage even while he swallowed some of the last decent beer to come to Newbern Center.  He wiped froth from his waistcoat.

“Pacifists!” he stormed.  “Why don’t they ever look into their own bodies?  They couldn’t live a day on non-resistance to evil.  Every one of their bodies is thronged with fighting soldiers.  Every pacifist is a living lie.  Phagocytes, that’s what they are—­white corpuscles—­and it’s all they’re there for.  They believe in preparedness hard enough.  See ’em march up to fight when there’s an invasion!  And how they do fight!  These pacifists belie their own construction.  They’re built on a fight from the cradle and before that.

“I wish more of their own phagocytes would begin to preach non-resistance and try to teach great moral lessons to invading germs.  We wouldn’t have to listen to so many of ’em.  But phagocytes don’t act that way.  They keep in training.  They don’t say, like that poor old maunderer I read this morning, that there’s no use preparing—­that a million phagocytes will spring to arms overnight if their country’s invaded.  They keep in trim.  They fight quick.  If they didn’t we wouldn’t be here.”

“These phagocytes—­is infantry, yes?” demanded Herman Vielhaber.  “I never hear ’em named before like that.”

“Infantry, and all the other branches, in a healthy body—­and our own body is healthy.  Watch our phagocytes come forward now, just as those tiny white corpuscles rush through the blood to an invaded spot.  You’ll see ’em come quick.  Herman, your country has licked Belgium and Serbia—­you can rightly claim that much.  But she’ll never get another decision.  Too many phagocytes.”