nore.

Dorn somberly shook his head. "God! I did not find God out there. I
cannot see God's hand in this infernal war."

"But _I_ can. What called you so resistlessly? What made you go?"

"You know. The debt I thought I ought to pay. And duty to my country."

"Then when the debt was paid, the duty fulfilled--when you stood
stricken at sight of that poor boy dying on your bayonet--what happened
in your soul?"

"I don't know. But I saw the wrong of war. The wrong to him--the wrong
to me! I thought of no one else. Certainly not of God!"

"If you had stayed your bayonet--if you had spared that boy, as you
would have done had you seen or heard him in time--what would that have
been?"

"Pity, maybe, or scorn to slay a weaker foe."

"No, no, no--I can't accept that," replied Lenore, passionately. "Can
you see beyond the physical?"

"I see only that men will fight and that war will come again. Out there
I learned the nature of men."

"If there's divinity in you there's divinity in every man. That will
oppose war--end it eventually. Men are not taught right. Education and
religion will bring peace on earth, good-will to man."

"No, they will not. They never have done so. We have educated men and
religious men. Yet war comes despite them. The truth is that life is a
fight. Civilization is only skin-deep. Underneath man is still a savage.
He is a savage still because he wants the same he had to have when he
lived in primitive state. War isn't necessary to show how every man
fights for food, clothing, shelter. To-day it's called competition in
business. Look at your father. He has fought and beaten men like Neuman.
Look at the wheat farmers in my country. Look at the I.W.W. They all
fight. Look at the children. They fight even at their games. Their play
is a make-believe battle or escaping or funeral or capture. It must be
then that some kind of strife was implanted in the first humans and that
it is necessary to life."

"Survival of the fittest!" exclaimed Lenore, in earnest bitterness.
"Kurt, we have changed. You are facing realities and I am facing the
infinite. You represent the physical, and I the spiritual. We must grow
into harmony with each other. We can't ever hope to learn the
unattainable truth of life. There is something beyond us--something
infinite which I believe is God. My soul finds it in you.... The first
effects of the war upon you have been trouble, sacrifice, pain, and
horror. You have come out o