I knew he would be dining at the Barrys’, and that he would come looking me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference, however, since he waked Lovey by pounding on the door, and insisted on coming in. Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which streamed in behind him from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side by beginning to talk about the war. I have said that my mission had become unreal and fantastic, but that was only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was a holy war, to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omega of my convictions. And to Cantyre war of any kind was plainly unholy war, productive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be expressed by Lovey’s words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he had been listening. “Didn’t it get yer goat, Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?” It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been warned in London to be patient with Americans. “You must treat them as wise parents treat their sons,” I had been told. “Help them to see for themselves—and when they do that you can trust them.” So the best I could do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in that I had to pretend to be tolerant. “No one contends that war is the ideal method for settling human difficulties,” I admitted; “but as long as human society stands on certain planks in its platform there’ll be no other way.” “Then isn’t this the time to take another way?” “No; because you’ve got to change your bases of existence first. You can’t change your effects without first changing your causes, any more than you can graft an apple on an oak.” “But even without removing the cause you can still sometimes nip the effect.” “Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didn’t succeed in. All the trend of education during thirty years has been in the direction of eliminating war, while still keeping the principle that makes for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must have the effects.” “Then let us do away with the causes.”