CHAPTER VI
AN AIR RAID
"I do not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious."—Chesterton.
"They'll be here soon," said Dr. O'Grady. "The moon is low, and the shadows are long, and these oblique lights will suit them very well."
The division was in rest on the hills overlooking Abbeville, and the doctor was walking to and fro with Colonel Parker and Aurelle along the lime-bordered terrace, from which they could see the town that was going to be attacked. From the wet grassy lawns near by groups of anxious women were scanning the horizon.
"Yesterday evening, in a suburb," said Aurelle, "they killed a baker's three children."
"I am sorry," put in the doctor, "they should be favoured with this fine weather. The law of the storm seems to be exactly the same for these barbarians as it is for innocent birds. It's absolutely contradictory to the notion of a just Divinity."
"Doctor," said Aurelle, "you are an unbeliever."
"No," replied the doctor, "I am an Irishman, and I respect the bitter wisdom of the Catholic faith. But this universe of ours, I confess, strikes me as completely non-moral. Shells and decorations fall haphazard from above on the just and the unjust alike; M. Poincaré's carburettor gets out of order just as often as the Kaiser's. The Gods have thrown up their job, and handed it over to the Fates. It is true that Apollo,
who is a well-behaved person, takes out his chariot every morning; that may satisfy the poets and the astronomers, but it distresses the moralist. How satisfactory it would be if the resistance of the air were relative to the virtues of the airman, and if Archimedes' principle did not apply to pirates!"
"O'Grady," observed Colonel Parker, "you know the words of the psalm: 'As for the ungodly, it is not so with them; but they are like the chaff which the wind scattereth away from the face of the earth.'"