France is certainly very wonderful. It seems to me that in
her I see the white form of civilization making a determined stand
against the black powers of barbarism. I think our whole world realizes
this and that is why we all await the issue so breathlessly. It isn't
merely the question of a few forts changing hands or a few miles of
blood-soaked ground lost and won."
"I wonder," said Gertrude dreamily, "if some great blessing, great
enough for the price, will be the meed of all our pain? Is the agony in
which the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era?
Or is it merely a futile
struggle of ants
In the gleam of a million million of suns?
We think very lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an
ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the universe
think us of more importance than we think ants?"
"You forget," said Mr. Meredith, with a flash of his dark eyes, "that an
infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great. We
are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great
for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as much
importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth-pangs of a new era
--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything else. I am
not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth as the
immediate result of this war.
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