ever lived for. Oh, I can't tell you how I
felt about it. I can't even express it to myself. Sometimes I used to
feel as I think that truly noble simpleton Henry Ford may have felt
when he organized his peace voyage--that I would do anything, however
stupid, to stop it all. In a world where everyone was so wise and
cynical and cruel, it was admirable to find a man so utterly simple and
hopeful as Henry. A boob, they called him. Well, I say bravo for
boobs! I daresay most of the apostles were boobs--or maybe they called
them bolsheviks."

Titania had only the vaguest notion about bolsheviks, but she had seen
a good many newspaper cartoons.

"I guess Judas was a bolshevik," she said innocently.

"Yes, and probably George the Third called Ben Franklin a bolshevik,"
retorted Roger. "The trouble is, truth and falsehood don't come laid
out in black and white--Truth and Huntruth, as the wartime joke had it.
Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth," he cried
bitterly. "Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments.
I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers. I saw
the world clawing itself to shreds in blind rage. I saw hardly any one
brave enough to face the brutalizing absurdity as it really was, and
describe it. I saw the glutton, the idler, and the fool applauding,
while brave and simple men walked in the horrors of hell. The
stay-at-home poets turned it to pretty lyrics of glory and sacrifice.
Perhaps half a dozen of them have told the truth. Have you read
Sassoon? Or Latzko's Men in War, which was so damned true that the
government suppressed it? Humph! Putting Truth on rations!"

He knocked out his pipe against his heel, and his blue eyes shone with
a kind of desperate earnestness.

"But I tell you, the world is going to have the truth about War. We're
going to put an end to this madness. It's not going to be easy. Just
now, in the intoxication of the German collapse, we're all rejoicing in
our new happiness. I tell you, the real Peace will be a long time
coming. When you tear up all the fibres of civilization it's a slow
job to knit things together again. You see those children going down
the street to school? Peace lies in their hands. When they are taught
in school that war is the most loathsome scourge humanity is subject
to, that it smirches and fouls every lovely occupation of the mortal
spirit, then there may be some hope for the future. B