To me, albeit I have lived long under strict discipline and regard true discipline as the first essential of moral, physical, mental, and social training, to me it seems a gross and unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the individual—­to deny him sufficient captaincy of his soul for him to be free to control it at the dictates of his conscience, and to keep it Here or to send it There as may seem best.  Surely the implanted love of life and fear of death are sufficient safeguards without any legislation or insolent arrogant interference between a man and his own ego?  Anyhow, such are my views, and in perfect soundness of mind and body, after mature reflection and with full confidence in my right so to do, I am about to end my life here.

As to the second question, “Why should Evil be allowed to triumph?” I confess that my mind cannot argue in a circle and say, “You are born full of Original Sin, and if you sin you are Damned”—­a vicious circle drawn for me by the gloomy, haughty, insincere and rather unintelligent young gentleman whom I respectfully salute as Chaplain, and who regards me and every other non-commissioned soldier as a Common, if not Low, person.

He would not even answer my queries by means of the good old loop-hole, “It is useless to appeal to Reason if you cannot to Faith” and so beg the question.  He said that things were because the Lord said they were, and that it was impious to doubt it.  More impious was it, I gathered, to doubt him, and to allude to Criticisms he had never read.

His infallible “proof” was “It is in the Bible”.

Possibly I shall shortly know why an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Impeccable Deity allows this world to be the Hell it is, even if there be no actual Hell for the souls of his errant Creatures (in spite of the statements of the Chaplain who appears to have exclusive information on the subject, inaccessible to laymen, and to rest peacefully assured of a Real Hell for the wicked,—­nonconforming, and vulgar).

At present I cannot understand and I do not know—­though I am informed and infused with a burning and reverent desire to understand and to know—­why Evil should be allowed to triumph, as in my own case, as well as in those of millions of others, it does.  And thirdly, why does the man who would never deny beauty in a poem or picture because he failed to see it while others did, deny that immaterial forms of the dead exist, because he has never seen one, though others have?

I know of so many many men who would blush to be called “I-believe-what-I-see men,” who yet laugh to scorn the bare idea of the materialization and visualization of visitants from the spirit world, because they have never seen one.  I have so often met the argument, “The ghost of a man I might conceive—­but I can not conceive the appearance of the ghost of a pair of trousers or of a top-hat,” offered as though it were unanswerable.  Surely the spirit, aura, shade, ghost, soul, ego—­what you will—­can permeate and penetrate and pervade clothing and other matter as well as flesh?