r, and when people come to reckon up, they'll say that
there was blame up at the top in the Government of every Power that's
fighting, but there was a damned sight more blame amongst the Germans
than any of the others, and that's why many a hundred thousand of our
young men who've loathed the war and felt about it as I do have gone and
done their bit and kept their mouths shut."

"You cannot deny," Fenn argued, "that war is contrary to Christianity."

"I dunno, lad," Cross replied, winking across the table at Julian.
"Seems to me there was a powerful lot of fighting in the Old Testament,
and the Lord was generally on one side or the other. But you and I ain't
going to bicker, Mr. Fenn. The first decision this Council came to, when
it embraced more than a dozen of us of very opposite ways of thinking,
was to keep our mouths shut about our own ideas and stick to business.
So give me a fill of baccy from your pipe, and we'll have a cup of
coffee together."

Julian's pouch was first upon the table, and the Northumbrian filled his
pipe in leisurely fashion.

"Good stuff, sir," he declared approvingly, as he passed it back. "After
dinner I am mostly a man of peace--even when Fenn comes yapping around,"
he added, looking after the disappearing figure of the secretary. "But
I make no secret of this. I tumbled to it from the first that this was a
great proposition, this amalgamation of Labour. It makes a power of us,
even though it may, as you, Mr. Orden, said in one of your articles,
bring us to the gates of revolution. But it was all I could do to bring
myself to sit down at the same table with Penn and his friend Bright.
You see," he explained, "there may be times when you are forced into
doing a thing that fundamentally you disapprove of and you know is
wrong. I disapprove of this war, and I know it's wrong--it's a foul mess
that we've been got into by those who should have known better--but I
ain't like Fenn about it. We're in it, and we've got to get out of it,
not like cowards but like Englishmen, and if fighting had been the only
way through, then I should have been for fighting to the last gasp.
Fortunately, we've got into touch with the sensible folk on the other
side. If we hadn't--well, I'll say no more but that I've got two boys
fighting and one buried at Ypres, and I've another, though he's over
young, doing his drill."

"Mr. Cross," Julian said, "you've done me more good than any one I've
talked to since the