“Man changes,” he said, “from day to day and from age to age.  The science of the West has taught us that.  Man changes and war changes and all things change.  China has been the land of flowery peace, and she may yet give peace to all the world.  She has put aside that puppet Emperor at Peking, she turns her face to the new learning of the West as a man lays aside his heavy robes, in order that her task may be achieved.”

The older man spoke, his manner was more than a little incredulous, and yet not altogether contemptuous.  “You believe that someday there will be no more war in the world, that a time will come when men will no longer plot and plan against the welfare of men?”

“Even that last,” said the younger man.  “Did any of us dream twenty-five years ago that here in China we should live to see a republic?  The age of the republics draws near, when men in every country of the world will look straight up to the rule of Right and the empire of Heaven.”

("And God will be King of the World,” said the Angel.  “Is not that faith exactly the faith that is coming to you?”)

The two other Chinamen questioned their companion, but without hostility.

“This war,” said the Chinaman, “will end in a great harvesting of kings.”

“But Japan—­” the older man began.

The bishop would have liked to hear more of that conversation, but the dark hand of the Angel motioned him to another part of the world.  “Listen to this,” said the Angel.

He pointed the bishop to where the armies of Britain and Turkey lay in the heat of Mesopotamia.  Along the sandy bank of a wide, slow-flowing river rode two horsemen, an Englishman and a Turk.  They were returning from the Turkish lines, whither the Englishman had been with a flag of truce.  When Englishmen and Turks are thrown together they soon become friends, and in this case matters had been facilitated by the Englishman’s command of the Turkish language.  He was quite an exceptional Englishman.  The Turk had just been remarking cheerfully that it wouldn’t please the Germans if they were to discover how amiably he and his charge had got on.  “It’s a pity we ever ceased to be friends,” he said.

“You Englishmen aren’t like our Christians,” he went on.

The Englishmen wanted to know why.

“You haven’t priests in robes.  You don’t chant and worship crosses and pictures, and quarrel among yourselves.”

“We worship the same God as you do,” said the Englishman.

“Then why do we fight?”

“That’s what we want to know.”

“Why do you call yourselves Christians?  And take part against us?  All who worship the One God are brothers.”

“They ought to be,” said the Englishman, and thought.  He was struck by what seemed to him an amazingly novel idea.

“If it weren’t for religions all men would serve God together,” he said.  “And then there would be no wars—­only now and then perhaps just a little honest fighting....”