“I saw them standing side by side one day—these two kinds of murderers. One was plainly dressed and carried a grimy black bag in his white bony hand. He was wrinkled and old before his time. He was nervous and shrinking, as though the fingers of the living were pointing at him and the curses of the dead following him.
“The other man was richly dressed and had a sword at his belt. He was large, full-fleshed and florid. He was bold, brazen and bulging, as though the whole world were at his back, pushing him forward and encouraging him to cultivate every bestial faculty to the full extent.
“Yes, dear Adelaide; I saw these two men standing side by side one day at a railway station. It was before thou wert born. I knew well enough who the man with the sword was, but the other!—the frightened, woe-begone looking man? Thy father did not want to tell me about him at first. He thought it might hurt thee and me. He was foolish about such matters as kind husbands are apt to be. It cannot hurt anyone to talk and think freely at any time about anything that is worth thinking or talking about. It hurts them and those born of them to suppress the truth.”
“O how true!” exclaimed Ruth! “Ralph ought to hear that.”
Adelaide nodded as she went on.
“And I did think of those men until my journey was ended, and I have thought of them many times since. Thanks to my righteous teachers I was able to see them as they were. They filled my soul with horror and pity—pity, for I perceived that they were the monsters the Government (which is ourselves) had made. But I pitied the scared looking man with the grimy black bag in which his weapon of death lay concealed more than I did the man with the glittering sword that he wore boldly in the eyes of all. He looked so wretched, so oppressed and conscience stricken, that I thought the time would surely come when he would throw off the terrible yoke that had been put upon him and refuse to use the bolts of heaven for the extinction of human life. But when I heard that he was working by night and day on an awful chair—a veritable throne of death on which the criminal will sit and die without looking upon his executioner’s hated presence; my pity was mingled with loathing, for I perceived that he was a willing instrument instead of a terrible necessity, and that he cared nothing for the victims of the law except that he might be spared from their cursings and hate. That he was plotting against them while he was hiding away from them and making of that death-machine a life-work.
“Beware of all such men, my dear daughter. Believe thy mother when she tells thee that the life-taker is sure to be a brute. Trust not thyself least of all to the so-called capable brute. See to it that the occupation of the man that would marry thee be not of their kind.
“In short, marry no one unless the spirit moves thee strongly. Remember that the credit is not to those who bring the most children into the world but those that bring the best or take the best care of those that are already here.”
Adelaide paused and looked at Ruth questioningly.
“She meant that the Krupp guns, torpedo boats and all those horrible war implements were inventions of the capable brute, did she not?” asked Adelaide.