And Germany! What of Germany? Michael saw, with his vivid imagination and unprejudiced mind, German mothers and fathers praying for their sons who were fighting for the cause of the beloved Fatherland, the cause which they believed was the cause of righteousness. Did they also not pray earnestly and sincerely? Did they, too, not believe that God would be on the side of righteousness?
Why were these agonized parents and brave soldiers to be made to suffer if it was all to be in vain, if their cause was not the just cause? Had they not obeyed the cult of their land and the teachings of their spiritual pastors and masters? He remembered the African's words: "The time draws near when each man will return to the land that gave him birth."
In this war which was raging, all the soldiers who suffered, and the parents who gave up their only-begotten sons to save their countries from extermination—all of them were the victims of circumstance. They were all heroes answering to the call which demanded of them life's highest sacrifice. They were victims of militarism, which must be wiped out of civilization.
Michael became agonized with the hopelessness of answering the questions which stormed his brain. Over and over again he said to himself the words, "Why do the heathen so furiously rage together and the people imagine vain things in their hearts?" And over and over again the answer came, "I tell you, my son, it is because they have not the love of God in their hearts."
He repeated the words almost mechanically until they indefinitely became a sort of refrain which kept time to the thud, thud of the engine, and the rushing noise of the train.
At last, tired out both mentally and physically, he fell asleep. In his dreams Margaret was very near to him. It was the old Margaret, radiant with the new wonder of love, fragrant with the night-air of the Sahara which surrounded them.
The war and its demands were wiped out; the world was back again to the fair free days which knew neither hate nor fear.
CHAPTER II
Nearly four months had passed and Margaret was still a pantry-maid in the same private hospital. The V.A.D. who was to have gone to France had suffered as great a disappointment as Margaret, for at the very last moment word had been sent to her—it had been unavoidably delayed—that her services in France would not yet be required. Margaret, with her bigness of nature, had insisted upon the girl retaining the post in the wards and letting things go on as they were. Her "bit" was very, very dull, but it was her "bit," and nothing she did, she knew, could in any way compare in dullness to the lives of the boys in the trenches. So she worked and endured, and found the necessary change of scene in the mixed company of her garden-square society.
The days fled past. It was a dull life for a young girl, but since the war began all girls worthy of their country had said good-bye to the pleasures of youth. Youth had no time to be young; old age had forgotten that it was old. The renaissance of patriotism had transformed England. The war recognized neither old age nor youth; it opened its hungry jaws and took everyone in.