these small emotions point the honesty and the depth of his great one. "From that moment my mind turned and twisted like a compass needle that had lost its sense of the north. The days were an endless burden blackened by the shadow of death, filled with emptiness, bitterness, and despair." I pass his ultimate tribute to the conscientious objectors, because he praises them for courage and not for soundness of judgement; I note his frank confession that the desire to get out of active service tormented him incessantly and that he used every undue influence he possessed to arrange a transfer to a safe and "cushy" job; and again, because I think that Mr. Gibbs thinks superficially carelessly, I quote from his final pages.
"The world travail was over, and even at that sacred moment when humanity should have been purged of all pettiness and meanness, should have bowed down in humility and thankfulness, forces were astir to try and raise up jealousy, hatred, and enmity between England, France, and America.
"Have we learnt nothing? Are these million dead in vain? Are we to let the pendulum swing back to the old rut of dishonest hypocritical self-seeking, disguised under the title of that misunderstood word 'patriotism'? . . . What is the world travail for? . . . What does the present hold out to us who have been through Valley of the Shadow?"
I break off here because, regrettably, Mr. Gibbs answers his question, the most poignant question which any man may ask, with a description of the world as it was five years or so ago; namely, a godless Church, a blind Justice, a corrupt Press, a charlatan faculty of medicine, "a Theatre whose stage doors are the tombs of virtue" (oh, I assure you this is verbatim), and Eugenics and Education, which Mr. Gibbs profoundly does not like. He does not like the thought of Allied officers, on the night of the armistice, going out from prison camps and carousing with German prostitutes. Apparently Mr. Gibbs is not an internationalist!
I do not wish to be unfair, and since I am almost done with Mr. Gibbs, I must say that the undertone of his protesting is not so meagre as his expression. His brother, far more expert in writing, has summed up the pacifist philosophy—and approved of it—in his
