Page:Karel Čapek - The Absolute at Large (1927).djvu/238

 "That's what nobody knows, aunt. They say it's about religion—that's what they tell me."

"What sort of religion?"

"Oh, ours or the Swiss—nobody knows which. It's so as there'll be only one religion, they say."

"Well, we used to have only one religion before."

"But other places had a different one, aunt. They say there was orders from above that there must be only one."

"What sort of orders? Where from?"

"Nobody knows. They say there were once machines that had religion inside of them. It was hidden in a sort of long boiler."

"And what were the boilers for?"

"Nobody knows. Just a sort of boilers. And they say that God appeared to people to make them believe. There was a lot in those days, aunt, that didn't believe. One has to believe in something; what's the use? If people had only believed, God wouldn't have appeared to them. So it was only their godlessness that made Him come into the world, see, aunt?"

"Well, yes, but what did this awful war begin for?"

"Nobody knows. People say that the Chinese or the Turks began it. They say that they brought their own God with them in those boilers. They're supposed to be terrible religious, the Turks and the