r the
government would permit the English-cut uniform for officers; a few of
the hopelessly lazy wrote to the obscure branches of the War Department,
seeking an easy commission and a soft berth.

Then, after a week, Amory saw Burne and knew at once that argument would
be futile--Burne had come out as a pacifist. The socialist magazines,
a great smattering of Tolstoi, and his own intense longing for a cause
that would bring out whatever strength lay in him, had finally decided
him to preach peace as a subjective ideal.

"When the German army entered Belgium," he began, "if the inhabitants
had gone peaceably about their business, the German army would have been
disorganized in--"

"I know," Amory interrupted, "I've heard it all. But I'm not going to
talk propaganda with you. There's a chance that you're right--but even
so we're hundreds of years before the time when non-resistance can touch
us as a reality."

"But, Amory, listen--"

"Burne, we'd just argue--"

"Very well."

"Just one thing--I don't ask you to think of your family or friends,
because I know they don't count a picayune with you beside your sense
of duty--but, Burne, how do you know that the magazines you read and
the societies you join and these idealists you meet aren't just plain
_German?_"

"Some of them are, of course."

"How do you know they aren't _all_ pro-German--just a lot of weak
ones--with German-Jewish names."

"That's the chance, of course," he said slowly. "How much or how little
I'm taking this stand because of propaganda I've heard, I don't know;
naturally I think that it's my most innermost conviction--it seems a
path spread before me just now."

Amory's heart sank.

"But think of the cheapness of it--no one's really going to martyr you
for being a pacifist--it's just going to throw you in with the worst--"

"I doubt it," he interrupted.

"Well, it all smells of Bohemian New York to me."

"I know what you mean, and that's why I'm not sure I'll agitate."

"You're one man, Burne--going to talk to people who won't listen--with
all God's given you."

"That's what Stephen must have thought many years ago. But he preached
his sermon and they killed him. He probably thought as he was dying what
a waste it all was. But you see, I've always felt that Stephen's death
was the thing that occurred to Paul on the road to Damascus, and sent
him to preach the word of Christ all over the world."

"Go on."

"That's all--this is my