“Nonsense,” said Eddy. “Mr. Datcherd would be delighted. Mr. Traherne’s a first-rate lecturer, you know; they learn more from him than they do from all the Socialist literature they get out of the library.” Worse than this, several young men who despised church-going, quite suddenly took to it, bicycling over to the Borough to hear the Reverend Traherne preach. Datcherd had no objection to anyone going to church if from conviction, but this sort of unbalanced, unreasoning yielding to a personal influence he would certainly consider degrading and unworthy of a thinking citizen. Be a man’s convictions what they might, Datcherd held, let them _be_ convictions, based on reason and principle, not incoherent impulses and chance emotions. It was almost certain that he would not have approved of Traherne’s influence over his clubs. Still less, Pollard thought, would he have approved of Captain Greville’s. Captain Greville was a retired captain, who needs no description here. His mission in life was to talk about the National Service League. Eddy, who, it may be remembered, belonged among other leagues to this, met him somewhere, and requested him to come and address the club on the subject one evening. He did so. He made a very good speech, for thirty-five minutes, which is exactly the right length for this topic. (Some people err, and speak too long, on this as on many other subjects, and miss their goal in consequence.) Captain Greville said, How delightful to strengthen the national fibre and the sense of civic duty by bringing all men into relation with national ideas through personal training during youth; to strengthen the national health by sound physical development and discipline, etcetera; to bring to bear upon the most important business with which a nation can have to deal, namely, National Defence, the knowledge, the interest, and the criticism of the national mind; to safeguard the nation against war by showing that we are prepared for it, and ensure that, should war break out, peace may be speedily re-established; in short, to Organize our Man Power; further, not to be shot in time of invasion for carrying a gun unlawfully, which is a frequent incident (sensation). He said a good deal more, which need not be specified, as it is doubtless familiar to many, and would be unwelcome to others. At the end he said, “Are you Democrats? Then join the League, which advocates the only democratic system of defence. Are you Socialists?” (this was generous, because he disliked Socialists very much) “Then join the League, which aims at a reform strictly in accordance with the principles of co-operative socialism; in fact, many people base their opposition to it on the grounds that it is too socialistic. Finally (he observed), what we want is not a standing army, and not a war--God forbid--but men capable of fighting _like_ men in defence of their wives, their children, and their homes.”