"How do you know? Would
you feel the same if you yourself were turned out a helpless invalid for
life with your occupation gone? Are you sure that you are not only
expressing the feeling of relief in the community at having a danger over?
Is it more than the sense of gratitude of a man who has not suffered
unbearably, to the people who _have_ died and suffered? The only
evidence worth having is that of the real sufferers. Take the case of the
people who have died. You can't get evidence from them. It is an assumption
that they are content to have died. Is not the glory which surrounds
them--and how short a time that lasts!--a human attempt to make consciences
comfortable, and to relieve human doubts? The worst of that theory is that
it makes so light of the worth of life; and, after all, a soldier's
business is to kill and not to be killed; while, generally speaking, the
worst turn that a strong, healthy, and honest man can do to his country is
to die prematurely. Of course war has a great and instinctive prestige
about it; are we not misled by that into accepting it as an inevitable
business?"
"No, I believe there is a real gain," said Lestrange, "in the national
sense of unity, in the feeling of having been equal to an emergency."
"But are you speaking of a nation which conquers or a nation which is
defeated?" said Father Payne.
"Both," said Lestrange; "it unites a nation in any case.
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