What would be the next order? Must all move forward to a rendezvous arranged in case of heavy fighting? Some hoped for that and "a good dose of the real thing till we are done up and have to rest."

"But why, why, why," cried one, "why must there be any attack? Think of the live men to be snuffed out! Think of the smashed bones and tom-up bodies! Think of the blood! Plenty of soaking stretchers for us for a while. Surely it's better to help clear up the mess than to go home and talk peace."

The great battle did not begin. This was merely a feint, costing some ammunition and life, but seriously harming neither side. One by one these young men of compromise returned and supped with thankfulness. Their share of work had been done without a hitch, and there was prospect of a night's sleep after all. They duly went to their straw beds, and puzzled drowsily awhile over those gallant but mistaken multitudes ranged against each other across Europe.

Some say that peace can be established only by a passion of goodwill. But may it not be that some are called to that work here and some there? While there is the chance of serving those who nobly suffer through humanity's error we cannot stay at home. Toward these patient, courageous, cheerful, and no doubt misguided fellow-men we extend our "passion of goodwill." Because of our oneness with humanity we dare not hold ourselves apart from the calamity. War is indeed strife of the right hand with the left; it is heart-splitting discord; yet under the shadow of our old grey church, and under the light of the stars, war itself may help a man to a new knowledge of the communion of all men.

The spirit that is mankind is mad to-day perhaps; but out of the madness she will come purified wondrously. We, her tiny members, need to be purified with her. That is why we are here.

The Splendid Race While an undergraduate at Oxford from 1905 to 1909, Stapledon began reading some of the pioneering nineteenth-century studies in genetics by Gregor Mendel, Francis Galton, and August Weismann. "The Splendid Race," printed in 1908 in The Old Abbotsholmian, a magazine edited by alumni of his boarding school, is the earliest complete statement of his interest in eugenics, a key concept in the visionary biology of his later fiction. The Edwardian quaintness of his project to breed a race of "gentlemen" and the callow endorsement of new laws governing reproduction would be replaced later in Last and First Men and Sirius by subtler and warier images of the possibilities and the risks of eugenic "improvements." Nevertheless, this youthful exercise delineates a lifelong preoccupation reflected in such pieces as the 1931 broadcast on "The Remaking of Man" and his 1948 speech, "Interplanetary Man?"

COLUMBUS FOUND A NEW WORLD; but Francis Galton found a new humanity. The former discovery has given us gold and enterprise; from the latter we may hope for gentlemen, even heroes. It was long after the voyage of Columbus that the new world began to be used by the old. So also it will be long after the first probing of the subject that mankind will begin to profit by the science of heredity. After the work of Mendel, Weismann, Galton, and others, our conception of humanity must be fundamentally altered. To the ancient the human type was a rock, created fixed for evermore. To the man of the last century it was a cloud, ever changing but unalterable. To us it must be a virgin continent, to be cultivated and civilised. Darwin showed that man is the result of evolution. Others have shown that he may direct his evolution. Hitherto we have sought progress with social and political contrivances; but soon we shall bring to bear what may be a far more potent method. Mankind is like a child that has been patiently gathering apples as they fall, when suddenly he has the glorious idea of climbing the tree. Hitherto he has been stinted, but now there opens a vision of plenty to be realised by pluck and skill. For mankind the apples are health and strength, intellect and virtue.

Already lives have been spent in building up the science of heredity. But not till a wide-spread interest has been aroused can that science be applied to the art of eugenics. There must be a general acquaintance with the wonderful results of statistical investigation and experiment. Most biologists agree that man is the expression of a multiplicity of inherited characteristics, which environment can affect directly only during the life of the individual. They believe that characteristics acquired during the lifetime of the parent are not heritable.