Number Seventeen | Page 9

eyes said plainly:
"I like you. Come again soon."
Then she was gone and the pleasant room lost some of its glow and
color.
"Don't sit down again, Theydon," said Forbes, rising. "We'll have
coffee brought to my den. What is your favorite liqueur-- or shall we
tell Tomlinson to send along that decanter of port? It's a first-rate wine.
Another glass won't hurt you, or me, for that matter."
Theydon had hardly dared to touch the champagne supplied during the
meal. Abstemious at all times, because he found that wine or spirits
interfered with his capacity for work, he felt that a clear head and
steady nerves were called for that night more than any other night in his
life. Following the lead given by his host, therefore, he elected for the
port.
"You are right, too," said Forbes. "You remember Dr. Johnson's dictum:
'Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a
hero must drink brandy'? Tonight, not aspiring to the heroic, we'll stick
to port."
"It is a curious fact that on my return from Brooklands today I took a
glass of brandy," confessed Theydon. "I seldom, if ever, drink any
intoxicant before dining, but I needed a stimulant of a sort, and some
unknown tissue in me cried aloud for brandy."
He hoped vaguely that the comment would lead to something more
explicit, and thus bring him, without undue emphasis, so to speak, to
the one topic on which he was now resolved to obtain a decisive
statement from the man chiefly concerned before he faced the
representatives of Scotland Yard.
But Forbes, motioning to an easy chair in a well-appointed library, and

flinging himself into another, gave heed only to the one word--
Brooklands.
"Did you fly?" he asked.
"No. I was soaking in theory, not practice."
"Ah, theory. It would, indeed, seem to be true that folded away in some
convolution of our brain are the faculties of the fish and the bird. Those
latent powers are expanding daily. The submarine has already gone far
beyond the practical achievement of aerial craft. But why, in the name
of humanity, should every such development of man's almost
immeasurable resources be dedicated to warlike purposes? I am sick at
heart when I hear the first question put in these days to each inventor:
'Can you enable us to kill more of our fellowmen than we can kill with
existing appliances?' Is it a new engine, a new amalgam of metals, a
new explosive, a new field of electrical energy, one hears the same
vulture's cry-- 'How many, how far, how safely can we slay?' I regard
this lust for destruction as contemptible. It is a strange and ignominious
feature of modern life. Forgive me, Mr. Theydon, if I speak strongly on
this matter. The men who spread the bounds of science today are,
nominally, at any rate, Christians. They tell of peace and goodwill to all,
yet prepare unceasingly for some awful Armageddon.[*] We teach
Christ's gospel in pulpit and schoolhouse, strive to express it in our
laws, obey it in our lives and social relations, yet we are armed to the
teeth and ever arming, adding strength to the plates of our warships and
distance to the range of our guns, constantly riveting and welding and
forging monsters which shall shatter men and cities and States."
[*This story was written before the outbreak of war in 1914.]
It was not the younger man now who talked brilliantly and forcibly.
Theydon, frankly abandoning the effort to twist the conversation to that
enigma which, the more he saw and heard of Forbes the more
incredible it became, listened enthralled to one who spoke with the
conviction and earnestness of a prophet.
"Don't imagine that I am framing an indictment against Christianity,"

went on Forbes passionately. "The Sermon on the Mount inspires all
that is great and noble in our everyday existence, all that is eternally
beautiful in our dreams of the future. But why this din of war, this
smoke of arsenals, this marching and drilling of the world's youth?
Nature's law appears to have two simple clauses. It enforces a principle
in the struggle for existence, a test in the survival of the fittest. Great
heavens, are not these enough, without having our ears deafened by
powder and drumming? That is why I am devoting a good deal of time
and no small amount of money to an international crusade against the
warlike idea, and I see no reason why a beginning should not be made
with the airship and the airplane. We are too late with the submarine,
but, before the golden hour passes, let us stop the navigation of the air
from forming part of the equipment of murder.