“And when you’ve proved it—we stop fighting?”
Markham shrugged his shoulders, thrust aside his plate and filled his pipe.
“Curious, the failure to understand the influence on ourselves of what we make and use. We just make and use and damn the consequence. … When Lavoisier invented the chemical balance, did he stop to consider the possibilities of chemical action in combination with outbursts of human emotion? If he had … !”
In the silence that followed they heard the chiming of three-quarters—and there flashed inconsequently into Theodore’s memory, a vision of himself, a small boy with his hand in his mother’s, staring up, round-eyed, at Big Ben of London—while his mother taught him the words that were fitted to the chime.
Lord—through—this—hour
Be—Thou—our—guide,
So—by—Thy—power
No—foot—shall—slide.
… That, or something like that. … Odd, that he should remember them now—when for years he had not remembered. … “Lord—through—this—hour—”
He realized suddenly that Markham was speaking—in jerks, between pulls at his pipe. “… And the same with mechanics—not the engine but the engine plus humanity. Take young James Watt and his interest in the lid of a teakettle! In France, by the way, they tell the same story of Papin; but, so far as the rest of us are concerned it doesn’t much matter who first watched the lid of a kettle with intelligence—the point is that somebody watched it and saw certain of its latent possibilities. Only its more immediate possibilities—and we may take it for granted that amongst those which he did not foresee were the most important. The industrial system—the drawing of men into crowds where they might feed the machine and be fed by it—the shrinkage of the world through the use of mechanical transport. That—the shrinkage—when we first saw it coming, we took to mean union of peoples and the clasping of distant hands—forgetting that it also meant the cutting of distant throats. … Yet it might have struck us that we are all potential combatants—and the only known method of preventing a fight is to keep the combatants apart! These odd, simple facts that we all of us know—and lose sight of … the drawing together of peoples has always meant the clashing of their interests … and so new hatreds. Inevitably new hatreds.”
Theodore quoted: “ ‘All men hate each other naturally.’ … You believe that?”
“Of individuals, no—but of all communities, yes. Is there any form of the life collective that is capable of love for its fellow—for another community? Is there any church that will stand aside that another church may be advantaged? … You and I are civilized, as man and man; but collectively we are part of a life whose only standard and motive is self-interest, its own advantage … a beast-life, morally. If you understand that, you understand tonight … Which demands from us sacrifices, makes none itself. … That’s as far as we have got in the mass.”
Through the half-open window came the hum and murmur of the crowd that waited for the hour. … Theodore stirred restlessly, conscious of the unseen turning of countless faces to the clock—and aware, through the murmur, of the frenzied little beating of his watch. … He hesitated to look at it—and when he drew it out and said “Five minutes more,” his voice sounded oddly in his ears.
“Five minutes,” said Markham. … He laughed suddenly and pushed the bottle across the table. “Do you know where we are now—you and I and all of us? On the crest of the centuries. They’ve carried us a long roll upwards and now here we are—on top! In five more minutes—three hundred little seconds—we shall hear the crest curl over. … Meanwhile, have a drink!”
He checked himself and held up a finger. “Your watch is slow!”
The hum and murmur of the crowd had ceased and through silence unbroken came the prayer of the Westminster chime.
Lord—through—this—hour
Be—Thou—our—guide,
So—by—Thy—power
No—foot—shall—slide.
There was no other sound for the twelve booming strokes of the hour: it was only as the last beat quivered into silence that there broke the moving thunder of a multitude.
“Over!” said Markham. “Hear it crash? … Well, here’s to the centuries—after all, they did the best they knew for us!”
V
The war-footing arrangements of the Distribution Office included a system of food control involving local supervision; hence provincial centres came suddenly into being, and to one of these—at York—Theodore Savage was dispatched at little more than an hour’s notice on the morning after war was declared. He telephoned Phillida and they met at King’s Cross and had ten hurried minutes on the platform; she was still eager and excited, bubbling over with the impulse to action—was hoping to start training for hospital work—had been promised an opening—she would tell him all about it when she wrote. Her excitement took the bitterness out of the parting—perhaps, in her need to give and serve, she was even proud that the sacrifice of parting was demanded of her. … The last he saw of her was a smiling face and a cheery little wave of the hand.
He made the journey to York with a carriageful of friendly and talkative folk who, in normal days, would have been strangers to him and to each other; as it was, they exchanged newspapers and optimistic views and grew suddenly near to each other in their common interest and resentment. … That was what war meant in those first stirring days—friendliness, good comradeship, the desire to give and serve, the thrill of unwonted excitement. … Looking back from after years it seemed to him that mankind, in those days, was finer and more gracious than he had ever known it—than he would ever know it again.
The first excitement over, he lived somewhat tediously at York between his office and dingily respectable
