outh
of the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an overnight Zeppelin
raid. People had got up hours before their usual time in order to
look at the wrecked houses before they went up to their work in town.
Everybody seemed abroad. Two nurses, not very well trained as nurses go
nor very well-educated women, were snatching a little sea air upon the
front after an eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep.
They were talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nasty
thing "up there," and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They had
both hated it.

"There didn't ought to be such things," said one.

"They don't seem needed," said her companion.

"Men won't always go on like this--making wars and all such wickedness."

"It's 'ow to stop them?"

"Science is going to stop them."

"Science?"

"Yes, science. My young brother--oh, he's a clever one--he says such
things! He says that it's science that they won't always go on like
this. There's more sense coming into the world and more--my young
brother says so. Says it stands to reason; it's Evolution. It's science
that men are all brothers; you can prove it. It's science that there
oughtn't to be war. Science is ending war now by making it horrible like
this, and making it so that no one is safe. Showing it up. Only when
nobody is safe will everybody want to set up peace, he says. He says
it's proved there could easily be peace all over the world now if it
wasn't for flags and kings and capitalists and priests. They still
manage to keep safe and out of it. He says the world ought to be just
one state. The World State, he says it ought to be."

("Under God," said the bishop, "under God.")

"He says science ought to be King of the whole world."

"Call it Science if you will," said the bishop. "God is wisdom."

"Out of the mouths of babes and elementary science students," said the
Angel. "The very children in the board schools are turning against this
narrowness and nonsense and mischief of nations and creeds and kings.
You see it at a thousand points, at ten thousand points, look, the
world is all flashing and flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it is
aquiver with the light that is coming to mankind. It is on the verge of
blazing even now."

"Into a light."

"Into the one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here! This brave
little French priest in a helmet of steel who is daring to think for the
first time in his life; this gen