Some people expected Mr. Pryor to refuse grumpily--and that would have
made enough scandal. But Mr. Pryor bounded briskly to his feet,
unctuously said, "Let us pray," and forthwith prayed. In a sonorous
voice which penetrated to every corner of the crowded building Mr. Pryor
poured forth a flood of fluent words, and was well on in his prayer
before his dazed and horrified audience awakened to the fact that they
were listening to a pacifist appeal of the rankest sort. Mr. Pryor had
at least the courage of his convictions; or perhaps, as people
afterwards said, he thought he was safe in a church and that it was an
excellent chance to air certain opinions he dared not voice elsewhere,
for fear of being mobbed. He prayed that the unholy war might cease--
that the deluded armies being driven to slaughter on the Western front
might have their eyes opened to their iniquity and repent while yet
there was time--that the poor young men present in khaki, who had been
hounded into a path of murder and militarism, should yet be rescued--
Mr. Pryor had got this far without let or hindrance; and so paralysed
were his hearers, and so deeply imbued with their born-and-bred
conviction that no disturbance must ever be made in a church, no matter
what the provocation, that it seemed likely that he would continue
unchecked to the end. But one man at least in that audience was not
hampered by inherited or acquired reverence for the sacred edifice.
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