Greyson spoke with an enthusiasm that was unusual to him.  So many of our wars had been mean wars—­wars for the wrong; sordid wars for territory, for gold mines; wars against the weak at the bidding of our traders, our financiers.  “Shouldering the white man’s burden,” we called it.  Wars for the right of selling opium; wars to perpetuate the vile rule of the Turk because it happened to serve our commercial interests.  This time, we were out to play the knight; to save the smaller peoples; to rescue our once “sweet enemy,” fair France.  Russia was the disturbing thought.  It somewhat discounted the knight-errant idea, riding stirrup to stirrup beside that barbarian horseman.  But there were possibilities about Russia.  Idealism lay hid within that sleeping brain.  It would be a holy war for the Kingdom of the Peoples.  With Germany freed from the monster of blood and iron that was crushing out her soul, with Russia awakened to life, we would build the United States of Europe.  Even his voice was changed.  Joan could almost fancy it was some excited schoolboy that was talking.

Mary had been clasping and unclasping her hands, a habit of hers when troubled.  Could good ever come out of evil?  That was her doubt.  Did war ever do anything but sow the seeds of future violence; substitute one injustice for another; change wrong for wrong.  Did it ever do anything but add to the world’s sum of evil, making God’s task the heavier?

Suddenly, while speaking, she fell into a passionate fit of weeping.  She went on through her tears: 

“It will be terrible,” she said.  “It will last longer than you say.  Every nation will be drawn into it.  There will be no voice left to speak for reason.  Every day we shall grow more brutalized, more pitiless.  It will degrade us, crush the soul out of us.  Blood and iron!  It will become our God too:  the God of all the world.  You say we are going into it with clean hands, this time.  How long will they keep clean?  The people who only live for making money:  how long do you think they will remain silent?  What has been all the talk of the last ten years but of capturing German trade.  We shall be told that we owe it to our dead to make a profit out of them; that otherwise they will have died in vain.  Who will care for the people but to use them for killing one another—­to hound them on like dogs.  In every country nothing but greed and hatred will be preached.  Horrible men and women will write to the papers crying out for more blood, more cruelty.  Everything that can make for anger and revenge will be screamed from every newspaper.  Every plea for humanity will be jeered at as ‘sickly sentimentality.’  Every man and woman who remembers the ideals with which we started will be shrieked at as a traitor.  The people who are doing well out of it, they will get hold of the Press, appeal to the passions of the mob.  Nobody else will be allowed to speak.  It always has been so in war.  It always will be.  This will be no exception merely because it’s bigger.  Every country will be given over to savagery.  There will be no appeal against it.  The whole world will sink back into the beast.”