"Oh, come, come!" and Gwent's little steely eyes sparkled--"It's the 'safe-guard of nations' don't you know?--it stands for honest free speech, truth, patriotism, justice--"
"Good God!" burst out Seaton, impatiently--"When it does, then the 'new world' about which men talk so much may get a beginning! 'Honest free speech--truth!' Why, modern journalism is one GREAT LIE advertised on hoardings from one end of the world to the other!"
"I agree!" said Gwent--"And there you have the root and cause of war! No need to exterminate nations with your destructive stuff,--you should get at the microbes who undermine the nations first. When you can do THAT, you will destroy the guilty and spare the innocent,--whereas your plan of withering a nation into a dust-heap involves the innocent along with the guilty."
"War does that,"--said Seaton, curtly.
"It does. And your aim is to do away with all chance or possibility of war for ever. Good! But you need to attack the actual root of the evil."
Seaton's brow clouded into a frown.
"You're a careful man, Gwent,"--he said--"And, in the main, you are right. I know as well as you do that the license of the press is the devil's finger in the caldron of affairs, stirring up strife between nations that would probably be excellent friends and allies, if it were not for this 'licensed' mischief. But so long as the mob read the lies, so long will the liars flourish. And my argument is that if any two peoples are so brainless as to be led into war by their press, they are not fit to live--no more fit than the mosquitoes that once made Panama a graveyard."
Gwent smoked leisurely, regarding his companion with unfeigned interest.
"Apparently you haven't much respect for life?" he said.
"Not when it is diseased life--not when it is perverted life;"--returned Seaton--"Then it is mere deformity and encumbrance. For life itself in all its plenitude, health and beauty I have the deepest, most passionate respect. It is the outward ray or reflex of the image of God--"
"Stop there!" interrupted Gwent--"You believe in God?"
"I do,--most utterly! That is to say I believe in an all-pervading Mind originating and commanding the plan of the Universe. We talk of 'ions' and 'electrons'--but we are driven to confess that a Supreme Intelligence has the creation of electrons, and directs them as to the formation of all existing things. To that Mind--to that Intelligence--I submit my soul! And I do NOT believe that this Supreme Mind desires evil or sorrow,--we create disaster ourselves, and it is ourselves that must destroy it, We are given free-will--if we 'will' to create disease, we must equally 'will' to exterminate it by every means in our power."