With the gathering of the dusk the rain had stopped.  He rose from his chair and walked to the window.  The sky had cleared; in the west shone a faint band of clear apple green in which burned one lucent star.  Distantly he could hear the murmur of the city like the pulsing heartbeat of the nation.  As often, in moments of tension, he seemed to feel the whole vast stretch of the continent throbbing; the yearning breast of the land trembling with energy; the great arch of sky, spanning from coast to coast, quiver with power unused.  The murmur of little children in their cradles, the tender words of mothers, the footbeat of men on the pavements of ten thousand cities, the flags leaping in air from high buildings, ships putting out to sea with gunners at their sterns—­in one aching synthesis the vastness and dearness and might of his land came to him.  A mingled nation, indeed, of various and clashing breeds; but oh, with what a tradition to uphold!

Words were forming in his mind as he watched the fading sky, and he returned quietly to the typewriter: 

“We are glad to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included....  The world must be made safe for democracy.”

The world must be made safe for democracy!  As the wires leaped and the little typewriter spoke under the pressure of his strong fingers, scenes passed in his mind of the happy, happy Europe he had known in old wander days, years before.

He could see the sun setting down dark aisles of the Black Forest; the German peasants at work in the fields; the simple, cordial friendliness of that lovely land.  He remembered French villages beside slow-moving rivers; white roads in a hot shimmer of sun; apple orchards of the Moselle.  And England—­dear green England, fairest of all—­the rich blue line of the Chiltern Hills, and Buckinghamshire beech woods bronze and yellow in the autumn.  He remembered thatched cottages where he had bicycled for tea, and the naive rustic folk who had made him welcome.

What deviltry had taken all these peaceful people, gripped them and maddened them, set them at one another’s throats?  Millions of children, millions of mothers, millions of humble workers, happy in the richness of life—­where were they now?  Life, innocent human life—­the most precious thing we know or dream of, freedom to work for a living and win our own joys of home and love and food—­what Black Death had maddened the world with its damnable seeds of hate?  Would life ever be free and sweet again?

The detestable sultry horror of it all broke upon him anew in a tide of anguish.  No, the world could never be the same again in the lives of men now living.  But for the sake of the generations to come—­he thought of his own tiny grandchildren—­for the love of God and the mercy of mankind, let this madness be crushed.  If his country must enter the war let it be only for the love and service of humanity.  “It is a fearful thing,” he thought, “but the right is more precious than peace.”