'What other view is there?'
'Then where does God come in?'
He asked the question simply, but evidently he was deeply in earnest. I recognized the intensity of his voice, saw the flash of his eyes.
The Minister looked towards me in a bewildered kind of way. I have an idea that he thought Edgecumbe was mad.
'I don't quite understand you,' he said. 'Will you tell me exactly what you mean?'
'I asked you,' said Edgecumbe, 'what you thought were the forces to be used in order to win this war, and you told me; whereupon I asked you where God came in.'
'God!' repeated the Minister; 'why, we are at war!'
'Exactly, that is why I ask. When the war commenced, the people of the nation were informed that we were going to fight a holy war, that we were going to crush militarism, do justice to small states, bring about an abiding peace in the world. We were told that it was God's war. May I ask where God comes in in your scheme of carrying it on?'
The Minister smiled. Evidently he had come to the conclusion that
Edgecumbe was a harmless lunatic, and should not be taken seriously.
'The fact that we are fighting for a just cause,' he said, 'is sufficient to prove that it is God's war.'