It was the most awful doubt he had ever had, for it smote at the training of all his life. “Could it be possible that after all our old German God is not the proper style and title of the true God? Is our old German God perhaps only the last of a long succession of bloodstained tribal effigies—and not God at all?”
For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts that gathered in the young attache's mind. Until suddenly he broke into a quotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe, for “Light. More Light!”...
“Leave him at that,” said the Angel. “I want you to hear these two young women.”
The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at the mouth of the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an overnight Zeppelin raid. People had got up hours before their usual time in order to look at the wrecked houses before they went up to their work in town. Everybody seemed abroad. Two nurses, not very well trained as nurses go nor very well-educated women, were snatching a little sea air upon the front after an eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep. They were talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nasty thing “up there,” and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They had both hated it.
“There didn't ought to be such things,” said one.
“They don't seem needed,” said her companion.
“Men won't always go on like this—making wars and all such wickedness.”
“It's 'ow to stop them?”
“Science is going to stop them.”
“Science?”