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 served by the Friends of Peace going to work in other ways."

"There I am with it," said Endor. "Yet, may I ask, what does it propose to do with the strange and terrible secrets it possesses?—secrets which, it seems to me, must always imperil the very thing it has been called into being to safeguard."

"Before the Society passes out of existence," said Hierons, "it will appoint certain trustees; and to these, under strict legal forms, will be intrusted the great discoveries, so dangerous to mankind, which it has been the first function of our Society to control."

Endor, keenly following every word, expressed his approval.

"In the first place, as you may know," Hierons went on, "it was because of the discoveries made by certain chemists and scientists, among whom I have the honor to count myself, that the Society of the Friends of Peace was first called into being. From the outset we realized that having had the good luck or the ill luck—one hesitates to say which—to evoke such powers, it became our duty to control them rigidly. For that purpose, we formed ourselves into a kind of International Conscience, on lines not dissimilar to the ill-starred League of Nations, which failed, as one is bound to believe, mainly because of the short-sighted policy of my own country. That, however, is still a sore subject upon which we won't enter here. To return to our Society, it was born when some of us re