Baltazar sat between Mrs. Jackman and the lady from Russia. At first he felt somewhat embarrassed, even dazed. He had not conversed with intelligent women since his flight from England. Even in his brave University days, his scholarly habits had precluded him from mingling much in the general society of Cambridge. Now the broad feminine outlook somewhat mystified him. The vital question which once was referred to in bated breath as the Social Evil, cropped up, he knew not how. His two neighbours talked across him with a calm frankness that rendered him speechless. He looked around the table, apprehensive lest the two young girls might be overhearing the conversation. Their mother did not seem to care in the least. She quoted statistics in a loud, clear voice. The Red Cross lady sketched conditions in Russia. The question was suddenly put to him: What about China? The fifty-year-old child of a forgotten day caught at the opening and talked hurriedly. He had lived in the heart of old China, mainly an agricultural population, a more or less moral, ancestor-fearing and tradition-bound welter of humanity. There was much to be said for old China, in spite of the absence of elementary ideas of sanitation and the ignorance of the new-fangled Western science of eugenics. Even now girl children’s feet were being bound. The ladies followed his desperate red herring and began a less alarming argument on infant welfare. When pressed for his opinion, he said:
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a baby at close quarters. I don’t remember ever having touched one. I have it on hearsay that the proper thing to do is to prod a baby’s cheek with the tip of your finger, which you wipe surreptitiously on your trousers. But I haven’t done it. I know nothing at all about ’em. In fact, your proposition that babies are an important part of the body politic has never occurred to me. In prolific China babies spring up like weeds, unregarded. Some of them die, some of them live. And the living are for the most part weeds too. One gets used there to an almost animal conception of the phenomena of life and death. I’m learning all sorts of things, getting all sorts of new points of view. Just see if I’m right. Modern Europe isn’t China. Even before the war, the birth-rate was a matter of anxiety. Now Europe, de-populated of her male youth, is in a desperate quandary. Every baby is a priceless asset to the race. Lord!” said he, pushing spoon and fork abruptly together on his plate, “I never thought of it. I must appear to you like a fellow on a great Cunarder, proclaiming his discovery of America. But the discovery is there all the same. The idea never entered my head till this minute. Everybody’s got to produce babies as fast as they can, and everybody’s sacred duty is to see that they live and thrive and become potential parents of more healthy babies. That’s the proposition, isn’t it?”
Comfortable Mrs. Jackman smilingly agreed. Without doubt that was the proposition. The flower of the world cut off by the war. . . . Oh! it staggered imagination to speculate on the number of bright young lives sacrificed! There was So-and-So, and Somebody Else’s son. Too tragic! The talk turned at once to the terrible intimacy of the war. Baltazar listened and learned many things.
When the men were left alone, Baltazar learned more things about the war; the blunders, the half-heartednesses, the mysterious influences that petrified action. The soldier spoke of the fierce fight of a devoted little set of enthusiasts for an adequate supply of machine guns; the judge of hidden German ramifications against which he, as a mere administrator of written law, was powerless; the Conservative member of Parliament—his revelations made every particular hair of Baltazar’s brown thatch stand on end. Jackman talked of labour troubles, mentioned a recent case in which thousands of men making essential munitions of war had downed tools because a drunken pacifist, a workman, had been dismissed from a factory. Baltazar, only a month awakened to the fact of war, held the same bewildered view of strikes as had nearly driven him forth at midnight from Pillivant’s house. He burst out:
“Why don’t they take the traitors and blow them from the cannon’s mouth?”
The Member of Parliament laughed aloud:
“There’s nothing like a fresh mind on things.”
“Well, why don’t they?”
“Don’t you think,” said the judge, “that such a course might tend to dishearten the working classes?”
“It wouldn’t dishearten the Army,” declared the literal-minded Colonel. “The men would be all for it. If any fellows tried to go on strike in the Army they’d be shot on sight.”