And then they compared notes and settled dates as to when war was to be declared. Jingalo was about to exhibit to the world the continuity of her institutions, and with her mind thus carried back to ancient times modern controversy was an anachronism. It was on those historic grounds that they arranged their armistice; but Recording Angels are more truthful than Archbishops or Prime Ministers; and the Recording Angel, having listened to their conversation, was led to set down upon his tables this notable memorandum--that on no account were popular pageantry or trade interests to be disturbed during so golden an opportunity as the Silver Jubilee. While that was going on defense of Church and State must be relegated to obscurity. III All this had taken place before the truce actually began (see, in fact, Chapter II). How much, or rather how little the King had heard of it we already know. How little the truce brought benefit to him we shall learn more fully in later chapters. Still for the moment he was not without comfort, for he had got Max to talk to. Every evening that they spent together much talk went on; and the King sat infected and edified while Maxian oratory flowed. "How is it," inquired his father, "that you have been able to think of these things? I see them when you tell me; but how did they ever come to enter your head?" "For some years," answered Max, "I had the advantage of being your youngest son. Until I was twenty, two lives stood between me and the succession, and while Stephen and Rupert were drilling I managed to get educated." "Poor Rupert!" murmured his father, "he would have made a much better King than either of us." "I don't think so," said Max. "He would merely have kept the monarchy to its old lines--that means sticking in a rut. If the monarchy is to mean anything it will have to move, not merely with the times but ahead of them." "How can it move ahead of them?" "How otherwise can it lead? That is what the heads of the privileged classes never seem to understand. Look at the Bishops! See what a spectacle they have made of themselves, all through not leading." "Ah, yes," sighed the King; "I thought you'd be against the Bishops." "Against them?" cried Max, "of course I'm against them! The Bishops are a set of prehistoric remains: and even if they were all up to date, a combined house of Bishops and Judges with full legislative powers is antediluvian (I'm speaking of the Deluge now in the sense in which Louis XV spoke of it)--it's an eighteenth-century arrangement.