“I hope so, from the bottom of my heart.”
“It will be a great awakening. We in France needed the war, too. You see only what is glorious in us now. You don’t know what went before. The heart of the people was pure in the great, beautiful fields of France, and that saved us. But we had begun to lose faith; we even said that we were decadent, that our day had passed. We were led by false leaders who talked to the people of their ‘rights,’ not of their duties. And these ‘rights,’—what were they? To do as they pleased, to seek to make life easier. They were breaking down the faith of the people, the faith in the family, with their right to live each for himself; the faith in France, with their internationalism; and their faith in God, which is at the bottom of it all.”
“Yes, so you said.”
“You do not believe?” she said, turning to me.
“I hope,” I said, after a moment’s pause.
“That may be enough for you, for you have traditions, traditions founded in faith. But is that enough for the people?”
“Magnus says it is just what keeps them from progressing.”
“How does he say that?”
“He says that the Church is a superstition worked in the interests of property. When the Church tells them that the reward will come in another life, it blinds them to what they can accomplish in this if they would organize and act.”
“Mr. Magnus is honest and logical, because he does not believe,” she said, to my surprise. “Those who are not honest with themselves are those who try to stand halfway.”