“The world’s great delusion,” he said. “Hypnotised by the governing classes the workers are everywhere bearing intolerable burdens in order to provide statesmen and kings with these dangerous toys. Men toil, and the fruits of their toil are taken from them to be squandered on vast engines whose sole use is to destroy utterly in one awful moment what we have spent the painful effort of ages in building up.”
He swept his hand out towards the great ship under whose shadow we were passing.
“Was there ever plainer proof,” he said, “that men are mad?”
Miss Gibson sat beside me. While Ascher spoke and while Gorman spoke, she held my glasses in her hand and watched the ships through them. She neither heard nor heeded the things they said. At last she laid the glasses on my knee and began to recite Kipling’s “Recessional.” She spoke low at first. Gradually her voice grew stronger, and a note of passion, tense and restrained, came into it. She is more than a charming woman. She has a great actress’ capacity for emotion.
We moved through waters consecrate, and she expressed for us the spirit which hovered over them. Here English guns raked the ships of Spain. Here, staggering homewards, shot-riddled, came the frigates and privateers of later centuries, their shattered prizes under their lee. Through these waters men have sailed away to fight and conquer and rule in India and in many distant lands. Back through these waters, some of them have come again, generation after generation of them, their duty done, their adventuring over, asking no more than to lay their bones at last in quiet churchyards, under the shadow of the cross, near the grey walls of some English church.
Miss Gibson’s voice, resonant, passionate, devout, lingered on the last syllables of the poem.
“The imperial idea,” I said, “after all, Gorman, it has its greatness.”
Then Tim spoke, shyly, eagerly.
“I wonder,” he said, “if they would let us go on board one of the submarines. I should like to see—— Oh, there are a lot of things I should like to see in any of those ships. They must be nearly perfect, I mean mechanically. The steering gear, for instance——”
His voice trailed off into silence.