"I'm afraid if war comes it won't be restricted to people, like Serbians and clergymen, who can be quieted by being asked to dinner," said Oldmeadow laughing. "We'll be fighting, too."
"And who will we fight?" Palgrave inquired. After passing tea, he had resumed his place at Adrienne's feet. "Who has been getting in our way now?"
"Don't you read the papers?" Oldmeadow asked him.
"Not when I can avoid it," said Palgrave. "They'll be bellowing out the same old Jingo stuff on the slightest provocation, of course. As far as I can make out the Serbians are the most awful brutes and Russia is egging them on. But when it comes to a crime against humanity like war, every one is responsible."
"Are you ready for strawberries, Aunt Monica," Barbara interposed. "If there is a war, I hope we may be in it so that I can do some of my first aid on real people at last."
She was carrying strawberries now to Adrienne who, as she leaned down, took her gently by the wrist, and said some low-toned words to her. "I know, my angel. Horrid of me!" said Barbara. "But one can't take war seriously, can one!"
"I can," said Mrs. Averil. "Too many of my friends had their sons and husbands killed in South Africa."
"And it's human nature," said Mrs. Chadwick, eating her strawberries mournfully. "Like the poor: whom you have always with you, you know."
"Human nature is altered already a good deal more than governments imagine," said Palgrave, "and they'll find themselves pretty well dished if they try to bring on a capitalist war now. The workers all over the world are beginning to see whose the hands are that pull the strings and they'll refuse to dance to their piping. They'll down weapons just as they've learned, at last, to down tools; and without them you can do nothing. That's the way human nature will end war."
"A spirited plan, no doubt," said Oldmeadow, "and effective if all the workers came to be of the same mind simultaneously. But if those of one country downed weapons and those of another didn't, the first would get their throats cut for their pains."
"It's easy to sneer," Palgrave retorted. "As a matter of principle, I'd rather have my throat cut by a hired ruffian than kill an innocent man--even if he did belong to a nation that happened to be cleverer and more efficient than my own. That's a crime, of course, that we can't forgive."