different from the man who sees a row going on and joins in it because he does not want to be out of a good thing!  Do you remember the story of the Irishman who saw a fight proceeding, and rushed into the fray wielding his shillelagh, and praying that it might fall on the right heads?  We have all of us uncivilised instincts, but it does not make them civilised to join with a million other people in indulging them.  I think that a man who refuses to join from conviction, at the risk of being hooted as a coward, is probably doing a braver thing still.”

“But I have often, heard you say that life must be a battle,” said Lestrange.

“Yes,” said Father Payne, “but I know what I want to fight.  I want the human race to join in fighting crime and disease, evil conditions of nurture, dishonesty and sensuality.  I don’t want to pit the finest stock of each country against each other.  That is simple suicide, for two nations to kill off the men who could fight evil best.  I want the nations to combine collectively for a good purpose, not to combine separately for a bad one.”

“I see that,” said Lestrange; “but I regard war as an inevitable element in society as at present constituted.  I don’t think the world can be persuaded out of it.  If it ever ceases, it will die a natural death because it will suddenly be regarded as absurd.  Meantime, I think it is our duty to regard the benefits of it; and, as I said, it turns a nation to God—­it takes them out of petty squabbles, and makes them recognise a power beyond and behind the world.”

“Yes, that is so,” said Father Payne, “if you regard war as caused by God.  But I rather believe that it is one of the things that God is fighting against!  And I don’t agree that it produces a noble temper all through.  It does in many of the combatants; but there is nothing so characteristic at the outbreak of war as the amount of bullying that is done.  Peaceful people are hooted at and shouted down; thousands of general convictions are over-ridden; the violent have it their own way; it seems to me to organise the unruly and obstreperous, and to force all gentler and more civilised natures into an unconvinced silence.  Many of the people who do most for the happiness of the world can’t face unpopularity.  They are apt to think that there must be something wrong with themselves, something spiritless and abnormal, if they find themselves loathing the cruelties of which others seem to approve.  I do not believe that war organises wholesome and sane opinion; I believe that it silences it.  It is a time when base, heartless, cruel people can become heroes.  It is true that it also gives serene, courageous, and calm people a great opportunity.  But on the whole it is a bad time for sober, orderly, and peaceable people.  I believe that it evokes a good many fine qualities—­simplicity, uncomplaining patience, unselfishness, but it reveals them rather than creates them.  It shows the worth of a nation,