July the Thirty-first, Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen! And yet, not one of those fairly well-informed five dreamed the False Peace actually at an end. Already, the Beasts in Gray,—murder, rape and plunder in their swinish eyes,—were abroad. Already the Crime, so long premeditated, had been committed. Even as these four sat at their game, less than fifty miles away from them, up in London, the womanizers and the wine-bibbers of Westminster were scuttling hither and thither, incredulous, anxious to compromise, fearful. The scum which had floated to the surface! They trembled now, those false guardians. For they and they alone in all England feared the Beast. But more than the Beast, they feared their own People;—knowing them not, neither their strength, nor their courage, nor their infinite forgiveness. But already (one man’s work!), silent, forethoughted, utterly equipped, the People of the Sea were wheeling to their battle-stations. Already, Anglo-Saxondom had flung its first bulwark across the world. It was the commencement of the Great Cleansing! PART FOUR CRISIS § 1 To comprehend the deliberate sacrifice which Peter Jameson made for the cause of humanity, it is essential that you should realize both the man and the offering he brought. It was not, primarily, the sacrifice of money, but the giving-up of a great ambition. For money, regarded purely as the purchase price of material comfort, he cared very little. As a spender, he had small sympathy with the exotic luxury of his time. His amusements were essentially simple—a gun, a trout-rod, a horse, a good glass of wine. All these, he might have possessed without working. But Peter had been picked up, while still a boy, into the fascinating game of business; and in that game he had found both work (which was vital to his temperament) and enjoyment. His personal qualities—resoluteness, concentration on the immediate job, a certain creative instinct, clear thinking, moral courage and a controlled imagination—fitted him eminently for the sport of commerce. Nirvana Limited, which would have been to the average individual merely a machine for the making of an income, represented to Peter Jameson—at the outbreak of war—the ultimate aim in life. He loved that business, not only for the sake of what it might eventually bring him, but for itself. He loved it, like a good gardener loves his garden, as much for the labour as for the result. He had seen it grow, in six years, from starved plant to a goodly tree—fruit almost ripe for the plucking. He felled that tree deliberately, in cold blood, under no compulsion save that of his own soul. And he waved no flags to console him for the felling!