The Project Gutenberg EBook of Simon Called Peter, by Robert Keable

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Title: Simon Called Peter

Author: Robert Keable

Release Date: January 3, 2005 [EBook #14579]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIMON CALLED PETER ***

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SIMON CALLED PETER

BY ROBERT KEABLE

AUTHOR OF "THE DRIFT OF PINIONS," "STANDING BY," ETC.

1921

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO JULIE

She never lived, maybe, but it is truer to say that she never dies. Nor
shall she ever die. One may believe in God, though He is hard to find,
and in Women, though such as Julie are far to seek.

THE AUTHOR TO THE READER

The glamour of no other evil thing is stronger than the glamour of war.
It would seem as if the cup of the world's sorrow as a result of war had
been filled to the brim again and again, but still a new generation has
always been found to forget. A new generation has always been found to
talk of the heroisms that the divine in us can manifest in the mouth of
hell and to forget that so great a miracle does not justify our creation
of the circumstance.

Yet if ever war came near to its final condemnation it was in 1914-1918.
Our comrades died bravely, and we had been willing to die, to put an end
to it once and for all. Indeed war-weary men heard the noise of conflict
die away on November 11, 1918, thinking that that end had been attained.
It is not yet three years ago; a little time, but long enough for
betrayal.

Long enough, too, for the making of many books about it all, wherein has
been recorded such heroisms as might make God proud and such horror as
might make the Devil weep. Yet has the truth been told, after all? Has
the world realized that in a modern war a nation but moves in uniform to
perform its ordinary tasks in a new intoxicating atmosphere? Now and
again a small percentage of the whole is flung into the pit, and, for
them, where one in ten was heavy slaughter, now one in ten is reasonable
esc