“The lives of my two boys,” was the fierce reply.  “Fred’s gone now—­died in hospital last night.  It was you who talked them into soldiering.”

Julian’s manner changed at once, and his tone became kinder.

“You are very foolish to blame anybody, Robert.  Your sons did their duty.  If they hadn’t joined up when they did, they would have had to join as conscripts later on.”

“Their duty!” Robert repeated, with smothered scorn.  “Their duty to a squirming nest of cowardly politicians—­begging your pardon, sir.  Why, the whole Government isn’t worth the blood of one of them!”

“I am sorry about Fred,” Julian said sympathetically.  “All the same, Robert, you must try and pull yourself together.”

The man groaned.

“Pull myself together!” he said angrily.  “Mr. Orden, sir, I’m trying to keep respectful, but it’s a hard thing.  I’ve been reading the evening papers.  There’s an article, signed `Paul Fiske’, in the Pall Mall.  They tell me that you’re Paul Fiske.  You’re for peace, it seems—­for peace with the German Emperor and his bloody crew.”

“I am in favour of peace on certain terms, at the earliest possible moment,” Julian admitted.

“That’s where you’ve sold us, then—­sold us all!” Robert declared fiercely.  “My boys died believing they were fighting for men who would keep their word.  The war was to go on till victory was won..  They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for England would keep their word.  You’re very soft-hearted in that article, sir, about the living.  Did you think, when you sat down to write it, about the dead?—­about that wilderness of white crosses out in France?  You’re proposing in cold blood to let those devils stay on their own dunghill.”

“It is a very large question, Robert,” Julian reminded him.  “The war is fast reaching a period of mutual exhaustion.”

The man threw all restraint to the winds.

“Claptrap!” was his angry reply.  “You wealthy people want your fleshpots again.  We’ve a few more million men, haven’t we?  America has a few more millions?”

“Your own loss, Robert, has made you—­and quite naturally, too—­ very bitter,” his master said gently.  “You must let those who have thought this matter out come to a decision upon it.  Beyond a certain point, the manhood of the world must be conserved.”

“That sounds just like fine talk to me, sir, and no more; the sort of stuff that’s printed in articles and that no one takes much stock of.  Words were plain enough when we started out to fight this war.  We were going to crush the German military spirit and not leave off fighting until we’d done it.  There was nothing said then about conserving millions of men.  It was to be fought out to the end, whatever it cost.”

“And you were once a pacifist!”

“Pacifist!” the man repeated passionately.  “Every human being with common sense was a pacifist when the war started.”