'It must be the same old tale,' I replied. 'This is a war of exhaustion, and the nations which can hold out longest will win.'

I was silent. For one thing, I did not wish to enter into a religious argument, and for another I scarcely knew what to say.

'You know those words in the Bible, Luscombe,--"Some trust in horsemen, some in chariots, but we will trust in the strength of the Lord our God." How much are we trusting in God?'

'It seems to me,' I replied, 'that God gives the victory to the biggest and best equipped armies.'

'That's blank materialism, blank atheism!' he cried almost passionately. 'We don't give God a chance, that is why we haven't won the war before now.'

I laughed good-humouredly, for even yet the mental attitude he had taken up seemed to me almost absurd.

'I see what you are thinking, but I tell you what,--the materialism of the country is adding to this frightful welter of blood, to this ghastly holocaust. The destinies of men and nations are not decided primarily by big guns, or mighty armies, and until we, as a nation, get back to a realization of the necessity of God, the war will drag on. As I told you before, when I was up at Ypres, I was convinced that if big armies, and big guns, and poison gas shells, could have won the war, Germany would have won long ago. But she was fighting the devil's battle, she was trusting in "reeking tube and iron shard,"--as Rudyard Kipling puts it. That is why she failed. With such a cause as ours, and with such heroism as our men have displayed, we should, if we had claimed the help of Almighty God, have won long since.'

'Look here,' he cried, 'on what, in your opinion, do we depend for victory?'

I was silent for a few seconds before replying.

'On the mobilization of all our Empire's forces,' I replied, 'on steady, persevering courage, and on the righteousness of our cause.'

'But supposing our cause hadn't been righteous, what then?'

I saw what was in his mind, but I did not feel like yielding to him. 'It's no use talking this high-falutin stuff, Edgecumbe,' I said. 'We are at war, and war means in these days, at all events, big guns. It means the utilization of all the material forces at our command.'

'Then you believe more in a big army, and in what they call our unconquerable Navy, than in Almighty God? Do you believe in God at all, Luscombe?'