know what I am talking about."

"You don't mean to tell me," said the Critic, "that a nation like
Germany--I'm talking now about the people, the country that has been
the hot bed of Socialism,--will stand for a war of invasion?"

That started the Doctor off. He flayed the theorists, the people who
reasoned with their emotions and not their brains, the mob that looked
at externals, and never saw the fires beneath, the throng that was
unable to understand anything outside its own horizon, the mass that
pretended to read the history of the world, and because it changed its
clothes imagined that it had changed its spirit.

"Why, I've lived in Germany," he cried. "I was educated there. I know
them. I have the misfortune to understand them. They'll stick together
and Socialism go hang--as long as there is a hope of victory. The
Confederation was cemented in the blood of victory. It can only be
dissolved in the blood of defeat. They are a great, a well-disciplined,
and an obedient people."

"One would think you admired them and their military system," remarked
the Critic, a bit crest-fallen at the attack.

"I may not, but I'll tell you one sure thing if you want a good circus
you've got to train your animals. The Kaiser has been a corking
ringmaster."

Of course this got a laugh, and though both Critic and Journalist
tried to strike fire again with words like "democracy" and
"civilization," the Doctor had cooled down, and nothing could stir him
again that night.

Still the discord had been sown. I suppose the dinner-table talk was
only a sample of what was going on, in that month, all over the world.
It did not help matters that as the days went on we all realized that
the Doctor had been right--that France was to be invaded, not across
her own proper frontier, but across unprotected Belgium. This seemed
so atrocious to most of us that indignation could only express itself
in abuse. There was not a night that the dinner-table talk was not
bitter. You see the Doctor did not expect the world ever to be
perfect--did not know that he wanted it to be--believed in the
struggle. On the other hand the Critic, and in a certain sense the
Journalist, in spite of their experiences, were more or less Utopian,
and the Sculptor and the Violinist purely spectators.

No need to go into the details of the heated arguments. They were only
the echo of what all the world,--that had cradled itself into the
belief that a great war among th