It is, however, his writings that matter most; though opposed to war, it is interesting to observe that he approves of the European War of 1914. At the age of seventy he demonstrated this by laying down his pen and asking the French War Office for a rifle. But in the main he hates war, though he be not Tolstoyan enough to believe in non-resistance. He hates war because it is not good business for the soul of man; I do not think he is much upset by slaughter or starvation, for humanity must die somehow, but he knows that a war makes vile those who survive. And if one reads _The White Stone_ one easily understands him. It is an incoherent work, for the several stories it contains are quite unrelated; it is the sort of conversation four or five cultured men might hold if they were to sit up for the night with wine and cigarettes. It is rather long-winded, here and there dull, pedagogic, but it represents him fairly well from an intellectual point of view, though it contains none of the indecency, blasphemy and Falstaffian fun which pervade his writings. It is philosophical, a little rigid, rather Protestant: but then Anatole France is seldom a good Catholic, except when he is chalking up on the cathedral wall: “To hell with the Pope!” The first part is classical, and holds nothing that he has not said in other works except one concentrated phrase: “The saints are a new mythology.” He then passes on to the story of Gallio, who is perhaps, philosophically speaking, the most seductive pagan in the New Testament, a minor rival being, of course, Pontius Pilate.