第45章 THE SEVENTH - THE SECOND VISION(5)

"But men are saying that now in a thousand places," said the Angel."Here is something that goes a little beyond that."His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders riding down to Windhuk.Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by side and talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with them.He had put sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his life was fairly forfeit, and he was not to be killed."We want no more hate in South Africa," they agreed."Dutch and English and German must live here now side by side.Men cannot always be killing.""And see his thoughts," said the Angel.

The German's mind was one amazement.He had been sure of being shot, he had meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a relentless fighter to the last; and these men who might have shot him like a man were going to spare him like a dog.His mind was a tumbled muddle of old and new ideas.He had been brought up in an atmosphere of the foulest and fiercest militarism; he had been trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness and so forth; war was war and the bitterer the better, frightfulness was your way to victory over every enemy.But these people had found a better way.Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform and rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because he was for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his arms and looking level at the executioners' rifles.There were to be no executioners' rifles....If it was so with Dutch and English, why shouldn't it be so presently with French and Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English, Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star of mankind, the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker was left to poison the wells of goodwill?

His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas."Austere,"he whispered."The ennobling tests of war." A trooner rode up alongside, and offered him a drink of water"Just a mouthful," he said apologetically."We've had to go rather short."...

"There's another brain busy here with the same idea," the Angel interrupted.And the bishop found himself looking into the bedroom of a young German attache in Washington, sleepless in the small hours.

"Ach!" cried the young man, and sat up in bed and ran his hands through his fair hair.

He had been working late upon this detestable business of the Lusitania; the news of her sinking had come to hand two days before, and all America was aflame with it.It might mean war.

His task had been to pour out explanations and justifications to the press; to show that it was an act of necessity, to pretend a conviction that the great ship was loaded with munitions, to fight down the hostility and anger that blazed across a continent.He had worked to his limit.He had taken cup after cup of coffee, and had come to bed worked out not two hours ago.Now here he was awake after a nightmare of drowning women and children, trying to comfort his soul by recalling his own arguments.Never once since the war began had he doubted the rightness of the German cause.It seemed only a proof of his nervous exhaustion that he could doubt it now.Germany was the best organized, most cultivated, scientific and liberal nation the earth had ever seen, it was for the good of mankind that she should be the dominant power in the world; his patriotism had had the passion of a mission.The English were indolent, the French decadent, the Russians barbaric, the Americans basely democratic;the rest of the world was the "White man's Burthen"; the clear destiny of mankind was subservience to the good Prussian eagle.

Nevertheless--those wet draggled bodies that swirled down in the eddies of the sinking Titan--Ach! He wished it could have been otherwise.He nursed his knees and prayed that there need not be much more of these things before the spirit of the enemy was broken and the great Peace of Germany came upon the world.

And suddenly he stopped short in his prayer.

Suddenly out of the nothingness and darkness about him came the conviction that God did not listen to his prayers....

Was there any other way?

It was the most awful doubt he had ever had, for it smote at the training of all his life."Could it be possible that after all our old German God is not the proper style and title of the true God? Is our old German God perhaps only the last of a long succession of bloodstained tribal effigies--and not God at all?"For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts that gathered in the young attache's mind.Until suddenly he broke into a quotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe, for "Light.More Light!"...

"Leave him at that," said the Angel."I want you to hear these two young women."The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at the mouth 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?"