d with him as she would have reasoned with
certain high personages on the other side of the water, and perhaps with
as little success. He replied cryptically that he was an out-and-out
phagocyte, and getting more so every time he read a newspaper. Winona
winced at the term--it seemed to carry sinister implications. Where did
the boy hear such words?

This one he had heard on a late Sunday afternoon when he sat, contrary
to a municipal ordinance of Newbern, in the back room of Herman
Vielhaber, with certain officials sworn to uphold that ordinance, who
drank beer and talked largely about what we should do; for it had then
become shockingly apparent that the phrase about our being too proud to
fight had been, in its essential meaning, misleading. Dave Cowan,
citizen of the world and student of its structure, physical and social,
had proved that war, however regrettable, was perhaps never to be
avoided; that in any event one of the best means to avoid it was to be
known for your fighting ways. Anyway, war was but an incident in human
progress.

Dave's hair had thinned in the years of his wandering to see a man at
Seattle or New Orleans, and he now wore spectacles, without which he
could no longer have enlarged his comprehension of cosmic values, for
his latest Library of Universal Knowledge was printed in very small
type. Dave said that since the chemicals had got together to form life
everything had lived on something else, and the best livers had always
been the best killers. He did not pretend to justify the plan, but there
it was; and it worked the same whether it was one microscopic organism
preying on another or a bird devouring a beetle or Germany trying to
swallow the world. Rapp, Senior, said that was all very well, but these
pacifists would keep us out of war yet. Doctor Purdy, with whom he had
finished a game of pinochle--Herman Vielhaber had lately been unable to
keep his mind on the game--set down his beer stein in an authoritative
manner, having exploded with rage even while he swallowed some of the
last decent beer to come to Newbern Center. He wiped froth from his
waistcoat.

"Pacifists!" he stormed. "Why don't they ever look into their own
bodies? They couldn't live a day on non-resistance to evil. Every one of
their bodies is thronged with fighting soldiers. Every pacifist is a
living lie. Phagocytes, that's what they are--white corpuscles--and it's
all they're there for. They believe in preparedness h