"Let us pledge ourselves to service.  Let us set ourselves with all our minds and all our hearts to the perfecting and working out of the methods of democracy and the ending for ever of the kings and emperors and priestcrafts and the bands of adventurers, the traders and owners and forestallers who have betrayed mankind into this morass of hate and blood—­in which our sons are lost—­in which we flounder still...."

How feeble was this squeak of exhortation!  It broke into a scolding note.

“Who have betrayed,” read Mr. Britling, and judged the phrase.

“Who have fallen with us,” he amended....

“One gets so angry and bitter—­because one feels alone, I suppose.  Because one feels that for them one’s reason is no reason.  One is enraged by the sense of their silent and regardless contradiction, and one forgets the Power of which one is a part....”

The sheet that bore the sentence he criticised was otherwise blank except that written across it obliquely in a very careful hand were the words “Hugh,” and “Hugh Philip Britling."...

On the next sheet he had written:  “Let us set up the peace of the World Republic amidst these ruins.  Let it be our religion, our calling.”

There he had stopped.

The last sheet of Mr. Britling’s manuscript may be more conveniently given in fac-simile than described.

[Handwritten: 

  Hugh
  Hugh
  My dear Hugh

  Lawyers Princes
  Dealers in Contention

  Honesty

  ’Blood Blood ...

  [Transcriber’s Note:  illegible] an End to them

]

Section 11

He sighed.

He looked at the scattered papers, and thought of the letter they were to have made.

His fatigue spoke first.

“Perhaps after all I’d better just send the fiddle....”

He rested his cheeks between his hands, and remained so for a long time.  His eyes stared unseeingly.  His thoughts wandered and spread and faded.  At length he recalled his mind to that last idea.  “Just send the fiddle—­without a word.”

“No.  I must write to them plainly.

“About God as I have found Him.

“As He has found me....”

He forgot the Pomeranians for a time.  He murmured to himself.  He turned over the conviction that had suddenly become clear and absolute in his mind.

“Religion is the first thing and the last thing, and until a man has found God and been found by God, he begins at no beginning, he works to no end.  He may have his friendships, his partial loyalties, his scraps of honour.  But all these things fall into place and life falls into place only with God.  Only with God.  God, who fights through men against Blind Force and Night and Non-Existence; who is the end, who is the meaning.  He is the only King....