If they had anything to do they wouldn't be here!" He laughed grimly,--the utter stodginess and stupidity of humanity EN MASSE had of late struck him very forcibly, and he found every excuse for the so-called incapacity of Governments, seeing the kind of folk they are called upon to govern.

He realised, as we all who read history, must do, that we are no worse and no better than the peoples of the past,--we are just as hypocritical, fraudulent, deceptive and cruel as ever they were in legalised torture-times, and just as ineradicably selfish.

The pagans practised a religion which they did not truly believe in, and so do we.

All through the ages God has been mocked;--all through the ages Divine vengeance has fallen on the mockers and the mockery.
"And after all," thought Gwent--"wars are as necessary as plagues to clear out a superabundant population, only most unfortunately Nature adopts such recklessness in her methods that it most often happens the best among us are taken, and the worst left.

I tried to impress this on Seaton, whose system of destruction would involve the good as well as the bad--but these intellectual monsters of scientific appetite have no conscience and no sentiment.