The lesson would
be driven home.
"Oh, yes, we shall have had enough of it," agreed Flossie, "by the time
we've paid up. There's no doubt of that. What about our children? I've
just left young Frank strutting all over the house and flourishing a
paper knife. And the servants have had to bar the kitchen door to
prevent his bursting in every five minutes and attacking them. What's he
going to say when I tell him, later on, that his father and myself have
had all the war we want, and have decided there shall be no more? The
old folks have had their fun. Why shouldn't I have mine? That will be
his argument."
"You can't do it," she concluded, "unless you are prepared to keep half
the world's literature away from the children, scrap half your music,
edit your museums and your picture galleries; bowdlerize your Old
Testament and rewrite your histories. And then you'll have to be careful
for twenty-four hours a day that they never see a dog-fight."
Madge still held to her hope. God would make a wind of reason to pass
over the earth. He would not smite again his people.
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