That, he said, had been straightforward. Now there was nothing straightforward: for him or for any man. One could have fought with a clean heart for a civilisation: if you like for the eighteenth century against the twentieth, since that was what fighting for France against the enemy countries meant. But our coming in had changed the aspect at once. It was one part of the twentieth century using the eighteenth as a catspaw to bash the other half of the twentieth. It was true there was nothing else for it. And as long as we did it in a decent spirit it was just bearable. One could keep at one's job--which was faking statistics against the other fellow--until you were sick and tired of faking and your brain reeled. And then some! It was probably impolitic to fake--to overstate!--a case against enemy nations. The chickens would come home to roost in one way or another, probably. Perhaps they wouldn't. That was a matter for one's superiors. Obviously! And the first gang had been simple, honest fellows. Stupid, but relatively disinterested. But now! . . . What was one to do? . . . He went on, almost mumbling. . . . She had suddenly a clear view of him as a man extraordinarily clear-sighted in the affairs of others, in great affairs, but in his own so simple as to be almost a baby. And gentle! And extraordinarily unselfish. He didn't betray one thought of self-interest . . . not one! He was saying: "But now! . . . with this crowd of boodlers! . . . Supposing one's asked to manipulate the figures of millions of pairs of boots in order to force someone else to send some miserable general and his troops to, say, Salonika--when they and you and common-sense and everyone and everything else, know it's disastrous? . . . And from that to monkeying with our own forces. . . . Starving particular units for political . . ." He was talking to himself, not to her. And indeed he said: "I can't, you see, talk really before you. For all I know your sympathies, perhaps your activities, are with the enemy nations." She said passionately: "They're not! They're not! How dare you say such a thing?" He answered: "It doesn't matter . . . No! I'm sure you're not . . . But, anyhow, these things are official. One can't, if one's scrupulous, even talk about them . . . And then . . . You see it means such infinite deaths of men, such an infinite prolongation . . . all this interference for side-ends! . . . I seem to see these fellows with clouds of blood over their heads. . . . And then . . . I'm to carry out their orders because they're my superiors. . . . But helping them means unnumbered deaths. . . ." He looked at her with a faint, almost humorous smile: "You see!" he said, "we're perhaps not so very far apart! You mustn't think you're the only one that sees all the deaths and all the sufferings. All, you see: I, too, am a conscientious objector. My conscience won't let me continue any longer with these fellows. . . ." She said: