“Did you fly?” he asked.

“No.  I was soaking in theory, not practice.”

“Ah, theory.  It would, indeed, seem to be true that folded away in some convolution of our brain are the faculties of the fish and the bird.  Those latent powers are expanding daily.  The submarine has already gone far beyond the practical achievement of aerial craft.  But why, in the name of humanity, should every such development of man’s almost immeasurable resources be dedicated to warlike purposes?  I am sick at heart when I hear the first question put in these days to each inventor:  ’Can you enable us to kill more of our fellowmen than we can kill with existing appliances?’ Is it a new engine, a new amalgam of metals, a new explosive, a new field of electrical energy, one hears the same vulture’s cry—­ ‘How many, how far, how safely can we slay?’ I regard this lust for destruction as contemptible.  It is a strange and ignominious feature of modern life.  Forgive me, Mr. Theydon, if I speak strongly on this matter.  The men who spread the bounds of science today are, nominally, at any rate, Christians.  They tell of peace and goodwill to all, yet prepare unceasingly for some awful Armageddon.[*] We teach Christ’s gospel in pulpit and schoolhouse, strive to express it in our laws, obey it in our lives and social relations, yet we are armed to the teeth and ever arming, adding strength to the plates of our warships and distance to the range of our guns, constantly riveting and welding and forging monsters which shall shatter men and cities and States.”

[This story was written before the outbreak of war in 1914.]

It was not the younger man now who talked brilliantly and forcibly.  Theydon, frankly abandoning the effort to twist the conversation to that enigma which, the more he saw and heard of Forbes the more incredible it became, listened enthralled to one who spoke with the conviction and earnestness of a prophet.

“Don’t imagine that I am framing an indictment against Christianity,” went on Forbes passionately.  “The Sermon on the Mount inspires all that is great and noble in our everyday existence, all that is eternally beautiful in our dreams of the future.  But why this din of war, this smoke of arsenals, this marching and drilling of the world’s youth?  Nature’s law appears to have two simple clauses.  It enforces a principle in the struggle for existence, a test in the survival of the fittest.  Great heavens, are not these enough, without having our ears deafened by powder and drumming?  That is why I am devoting a good deal of time and no small amount of money to an international crusade against the warlike idea, and I see no reason why a beginning should not be made with the airship and the airplane.  We are too late with the submarine, but, before the golden hour passes, let us stop the navigation of the air from forming part of the equipment of murder.  Surely it can be done.  England and the United States, Italy, France and the rest of Europe—­ the founts of civilization—­ can write the edict, with all the blazonry of their glorious histories to illuminate the page—­ There shall be no war in the air!’”