“It will be the worst day this planet has known. For one thing it will revolutionize warfare completely. Radioactivity will take the place of high explosives. It may become possible to wipe out a city like London in less than a minute. It may become possible to banish forever organic life from a whole continent.”
“But surely that will be to abrogate the functions of the Creator.”
“Quite so. And science tells us that Man is his own Creator, and that he has been millions of years in business. And now this simple, gentle, peace-loving American of the Middle West comes along with the information that, Man having reached the phase in which he bends the whole force of his genius to destroy his own work, successes of that kind are open to him beyond the dreams of his wildest nightmares. As the learned professor said to me just now: ‘Any fool can destroy. We are near the point where it will be possible for the infant puling in the arms of its nurse to press a button and punch a hole through the planet!’”
“No doubt he exaggerates.”
“He may. On the other hand he may not. He is a great and daring thinker, and he declares there are hidden forces in the universe that man is about to harness in the way he has already harnessed electricity, which, by the way, less than a hundred years ago was a madman’s dream.”
“I hear he is subsidized by the government.”
“He takes no payment for his services. He believes our cause to be that of civilization. Two of his boys are with the French Army, as he says, ‘doing their bit to keep a lien on the future.’”
“His country can be proud of him.”
Brandon could not repress a smile. The assumption of the tone was so typical of the man who used it that he was tempted to look at him in his relation to those events which were tearing the world in pieces. Had any man a right to sit in judgment on the actions of others in that calm, confident way? There was something far down in Brandon which asked the question, something deeper still which answered it. The self-complacency of this sublime noodle was not a thing to smile at after all; he had a sudden craving for a tomahawk.
“It seems to me,” said Brandon after a pause, “that modern materialism has at last managed to produce the kind of man it has been looking for. This charming church-going American says he hopes presently to be able to establish war on a scientific basis. So far, he says, man has only been toying with the subject.”