This modern febrility does not seem able to attack the real inner man. If there is a lamentable increase of vulgarity, superficiality, and restlessness in our epoch, there is also an inspiring development of certain qualities. Those who were watching human nature before the war were pretty well aware of how, under the surface, unselfishness, ironic stoicism, and a warm humanity were growing. These are the great Town Virtues; the fine flowers of herd-life. A big price is being paid for them, but they are almost beyond price. The war has revealed them in full bloom. _Revealed them, not produced them!_ Who, in the future, with this amazing show before him, will dare to talk about the need for war to preserve courage and unselfishness? From the first shot these wonders of endurance, bravery, and sacrifice were shown by the untrained citizens of countries nearly fifty years deep in peace! Never, I suppose, in the world's history, has there been so marvellous a display, in war, of the bedrock virtues. The soundness at core of the modern man has had one long triumphant demonstration. Out of a million instances, take that little story of a Mr. Lindsay, superintendent of a pumping station at some oil-wells in Mesopotamia. A valve in the oil-pipe had split, and a fountain of oil was being thrown up on all sides, while, thirty yards off, and nothing between, the furnaces were in full blast. To prevent a terrible conflagration and great loss of life, and to save the wells, it was necessary to shut off those furnaces. That meant dashing through the oil-stream and arriving saturated at the flames. The superintendent did not hesitate a moment, and was burnt to death. Such deeds as this men and women have been doing all through the war. When you come to think, this modern man is a very new and marvellous creature. Without quite realising it, we have evolved a fresh species of stoic, even more stoical, I suspect, than were the old Stoics. Modern man has cut loose from leading-strings; he stands on his own feet. His religion is to take what comes without flinching or complaint, as part of the day's work, which an unknowable God, Providence, Creative Principle, or whatever it shall be called, has appointed. Observation tells me that modern man at large, far from inclining towards the new, personal, elder-brotherly God of Mr. Wells, has turned his face the other way. He confronts life and death alone. By courage and kindness modern man exists, warmed by the glow of the great human fellowship. He has re-discovered the old Greek saying: "God is the helping of man by man"; has found out in his unselfconscious way that if he does not help himself, and help his fellows, he cannot reach that inner peace which satisfies. To do his bit, and to be kind! It is by that creed, rather than by any mysticism, that he finds the salvation of his soul. His religion is to be a common-or-garden hero, without thinking anything of it; for, of a truth, this is the age of conduct.