She was a
sweet-faced, white-haired lady. She touched Joan lightly on the hand.
"That's the trouble," she whispered. "It's in our blood."
Could we ever hope to eradicate it? Was not the survival of this
fighting instinct proof that war was still needful to us? In the
sculpture-room of an exhibition she came upon a painted statue of
Bellona. Its grotesqueness shocked her at first sight, the red streaming
hair, the wild eyes filled with fury, the wide open mouth--one could
almost hear it screaming--the white uplifted arms with outstretched
hands! Appalling! Terrible! And yet, as she gazed at it, gradually the
thing grew curiously real to her. She seemed to hear the gathering of
the chariots, the neighing of the horses, the hurrying of many feet, the
sound of an armouring multitude, the shouting, and the braying of the
trumpets.
These cold, thin-lipped calculators, arguing that "War doesn't pay";
those lank-haired cosmopolitans, preaching their "International," as if
the only business of mankind were wages! War still was the stern school
where men learnt virtue, duty, forgetfulness of self, faithfulness unto
death.
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