"Believe me," answered his dragoman, "the subject is not more abstruse than is generally chosen." "If he had taken religion I should have listened with pleasure," said the Angel. "Oh! sir, but in these days such a subject is unknown in a place of worship. Religion is now exclusively a State affair. The change began with discipline and the Education Bill in 1918, and has gradually crystallised ever since. It is true that individual extremists on the right make continual endeavours to encroach on the functions of the State, but they preach to empty houses." "And the Deity?" said the Angel: "You have not once mentioned Him. It has struck me as curious." "Belief in the Deity," responded his dragoman, "perished shortly after the Great Skirmish, during which there was too active and varied an effort to revive it. Action, as you know, sir, always brings reaction, and it must be said that the spiritual propaganda of those days was so grossly tinged with the commercial spirit that it came under the head of profiteering and earned for itself a certain abhorrence. For no sooner had the fears and griefs brought by the Great Skirmish faded from men's spirits than they perceived that their new impetus towards the Deity had been directed purely by the longing for protection, solace, comfort, and reward, and not by any real desire for 'the good' in itself. It was this truth, together with the appropriation of the word by Emperors, and the expansion of our towns, a process ever destructive of traditions, which brought about extinction of belief in His existence." "It was a large order," said the Angel. "It was more a change of nomenclature," replied his dragoman. "The ruling motive for belief in 'the good' is still the hope of getting something out of it--the commercial spirit is innate." "Ah!" said the Angel, absently. "Can we have another lunch now? I could do with a slice of beef." "An admirable idea, sir," replied his dragoman; "we will have it in the White City." IX "What in your opinion is the nature of happiness?" asked the Angel Æthereal, as he finished his second bottle of Bass, in the grounds of the White City. The dragoman regarded his angel with one eye. "The question is not simple, sir, though often made the subject of symposiums in the more intellectual journals. Even now, in the middle of the twentieth century, some still hold that it is a by-product of fresh air and good liquor. The Old and Merrie England indubitably procured it from those elements. Some, again, imagine it to follow from high thinking and low living, while no mean number believe that it depends on women." "Their absence or their presence?" asked the Angel, with interest. "Some this and others that. But for my part, it is not altogether the outcome of these causes." "Is this now a happy land?" "Sir," returned his dragoman, "all things earthly are comparative." "Get on with it," said the Angel.