Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/43

SCENES IN THE GREAT WAR pacifist Minister put it in his pocket when he dressed that night to go out to dinner. And when he sat down at table he found himself seated next to the able, earnest, and passionately patriotic Minister for Belgium. Perhaps he was urging some objections to British intervention, when his neighbour said: "But what about Belgium? You have promised to protect her, and if you don't do so she will be destroyed."

That raised visions of the work of the little nations; memories of their immense contributions to human progress from the days of Israel downwards; thoughts of the vast loss to liberty, to morality, to religion, and to all the other fruits of the unfettered soul that would come to the world from the over-riding of the weak peoples by the strong. The result was swift and sure—the letter in the Minister's pocket never reached the important person to whom it was addressed.

Only God knows whether this period, however short, of indecision among our people, and particularly among our responsible statesmen, with the consequent delay in dispatching a determined warning to Germany ("Hands off Belgium,") contributed to the making of the war. But it is at least an evidence of our desire for peace, and a sufficient assurance that if unseen powers were working on our side also, they were the powers of good. Yet so strangely do Rh