He talked with a sort of wonder of the former things.  “Has it ever dawned upon you to imagine the pettiness—­the pettiness!—­of every soul concerned in a declaration of war?” he asked.  He went on, as though speech was necessary to make it credible, to describe Laycock, who first gave the horror words at the cabinet council, “an undersized Oxford prig with a tenoring voice and a garbage of Greek—­the sort of little fool who is brought up on the admiration of his elder sisters. . . .

“All the time almost,” he said, “I was watching him—­thinking what an ass he was to be trusted with men’s lives. . . .  I might have done better to have thought that of myself.  I was doing nothing to prevent it all!  The damned little imbecile was up to his neck in the drama of the thing, he liked to trumpet it out, he goggled round at us.  ‘Then it is war!’ he said.  Richover shrugged his shoulders.  I made some slight protest and gave in. . . .  Afterward I dreamt of him.

“What a lot we were!  All a little scared at ourselves—­all, as it were, instrumental. . . .

“And it’s fools like that lead to things like this!” He jerked his head at that dead man near by us.

“It will be interesting to know what has happened to the world. . . .  This green vapor—­queer stuff.  But I know what has happened to me.  It’s Conversion.  I’ve always known. . . .  But this is being a fool.  Talk!  I’m going to stop it.”

He motioned to rise with his clumsy outstretched hands.

“Stop what?” said I, stepping forward instinctively to help him.

“War,” he said in his great whisper, putting his big hand on my shoulder but making no further attempt to arise, “I’m going to put an end to war—­to any sort of war!  And all these things that must end.  The world is beautiful, life is great and splendid, we had only to lift up our eyes and see.  Think of the glories through which we have been driving, like a herd of swine in a garden place.  The color in life—­the sounds—­the shapes!  We have had our jealousies, our quarrels, our ticklish rights, our invincible prejudices, our vulgar enterprise and sluggish timidities, we have chattered and pecked one another and fouled the world—­like daws in the temple, like unclean birds in the holy place of God.  All my life has been foolishness and pettiness, gross pleasures and mean discretions—­all.  I am a meagre dark thing in this morning’s glow, a penitence, a shame!  And, but for God’s mercy, I might have died this night—­like that poor lad there—­amidst the squalor of my sins!  No more of this!  No more of this!—­whether the whole world has changed or no, matters nothing.  We two have seen this dawn! . . .”

He paused.

“I will arise and go unto my Father,” he began presently, “and will
say unto Him------”

His voice died away in an inaudible whisper.  His hand
tightened painfully on my shoulder and he rose. . . .