Closing the door, he turned back to his desk, and taking the pen, looked for a full minute at the paper before him.
'To My Unborn Son.'
He gazed at what he had written as though the words had appeared of their own volition.
'To My Unborn Son.'
With a far-away dreaminess in his eyes he dipped his pen in the ink and commenced to write:
'Somewhere beyond the borders of life you are waiting. I cannot speak to you, nor look on your face, but the love of a father for his child can penetrate the eternal mysteries of the unknown. To those who love there is no death; and in the hearts of parents, children live long before they are born.
'My son, this letter that I write now to you will lie hidden and unseen by other eyes until the time when you alone shall read it. I shall be changed by then: like the world, I may forget; but you, my son, must read these words, and know that they are truth—truth as unchangeable as the tides of the sea, or the hours of dawn and sunset.
'Civilisation has murdered ten million men.
'The human mind cannot encompass that. It is beyond its comprehension, so it is trying to forget.
'Ten million men—murdered.