We all agreed to this.

“I will grant,” said Father Payne, “that if a nation which sincerely believes in peace and wishes to cultivate goodwill, is wantonly and aggressively attacked, and repels that attack, it may gain much from war if it sticks to its theory, does not attempt reprisals, and leaves the conquered bully in a position to see its mistake and regain its self-respect.  But it is a very dangerous kind of success for all that.  I do not believe that complacency ever does anything but harm.  The purpose must be a good one in the first place, the cause must be a great one, and it must be honestly pursued to the end, if it is to help a nation.  But it lets all sorts of old and evil passions loose, and it makes slaughter glorious.  No, I believe that at best it is a relapse into barbarism.  Hardly any nation is strong enough and great enough to profit either by conquest or by defeat.”

“But what about the splendid self-sacrifice it all evokes?” said Lestrange.  “People give up their comfort, their careers, they go to face the last risk—­is that nothing?”

“No,” said Father Payne; “it is a very magnificent and splendid thing,—­I don’t deny that.  But even so, that can’t be preserved artificially.  I mean that no one would think that, if there were no chance of a real war, it would be a good thing to evoke such self-sacrifice by having manoeuvres in which the best youth of the country were pitted against each other, to kill each other if possible.  There must be a real cause behind it.  No one would say it was a noble thing for the youth of a country to fling themselves down over a cliff or to infect themselves with leprosy to show that they could despise suffering and death.  If it were possible to settle the differences between nations without war, war would be a wholly evil thing.  The only thing that one can say is that while there exists a strong nation which believes enough in war to make war aggressively, other nations are bound to resist it.  But the nation which believes in war is ipso facto an uncivilised nation.”

“But does not a war,” said Lestrange, “clear the air, and take people away from petty aims and trivial squabbles into a sterner and larger atmosphere?”

“Yes, I think it does,” said Father Payne; “but a great pestilence might do that.  We might be thankful for all the good we could get out of a pestilence, and be grateful for it; but we should never dream of artificially renewing it for that reason.  I look upon war as a sort of pestilence, a contagion which spreads under certain conditions.  But we disguise the evil of it from ourselves, if we allow ourselves to believe in its being intrinsically glorious.  I can’t believe that highway robbery has only to be organised on a sufficiently large scale to make it glorious.  A man who resists highway robbery, and runs the risk of death, because he wants to put a stop to it, seems to me a noble person—­quite