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you that we have to work for our pleasures! Not only must we stake out our claim every year, but we must maintain it, and advertise it. And that's hard work. Morning and evening, in season and out, I have been at it. Year. after year!'

This was hard doctrine to me. 'But surely,' I urged him, 'in your own case - a long alliance?'

He was astonished. 'What on earth do you mean? Long alliance! If it is so, I can satisfy you that I have earned it.' 'Do you mean that there is a discretion -?'

He whistled shrewdly. 'I should jolly well say so. Every year my land is open to all-comers, and must be defended. Naturally she never commits herself until the thing is settled one way or another. How could she, poor girl? Look what depends upon it! The whole duty of bird, good Heavens! I grant you that I have maintained her to put it so for many years now - quite a number of years: but I am getting on, of course, and sometimes wonder how long I shall be able to keep it up. That's a warning in itself. Confound that chap― excuse me one moment.' Three long leaps, a swift flight the length of the lawn, and a trespasser was substantially warned off.

When he came back - 'Forgive my ignorance,' I said, 'but it seems to me that your deeds of arms are only performed on your own kind. Now, there was a wagtail perking about here a little while ago

'Well,' he said, 'what about it? He don't matter. My wife could n't look at him. He's of another race.'

I saw that; but "Thrushes!' I asked him. 'How about thrushes?'

He was slightly embarrassed. 'Ah, thrushes. yes, that's a delicate subject. I am afraid that cases have been known rare cases nearly all of them in confinement, where the

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morale is but still, I must admit, the thing is not unknown. After all, thrushes are, in a way, a kindred race. But we don't like it. It is one of those things that is n't done. We need not pursue the matter. And anyhow, wagtails, fly-catchers and that sort don't exhaust the soil. There's no objection to them on that score."

I saw that immediately. 'Apart from all that,' I said, 'we have brought our conversation to a point where your code and mine definitely separate. According to yours, fighting, like marriage, can only be with your own nation.

He threw up his head. 'Well, of course since there is nothing else to fight for.'

'With us,' I said, 'the only people we do not (as a rule) fight with is our own.'

He looked gravely at me. 'So I have understood from a recent acquaintance who came over from France not long ago. He had been compelled to leave his estates owing to what I must be pardoned for calling the deplorable proceedings of your and other nations. Incredible! But we must make allowances...'

'I hope you will,' I said humbly, for I felt his rebuke. 'Yet I believe that your race also would allow the unfortunate necessity of defending your homes against marauders, brigands, buccaneers, sea- and land-pirates.'

He admitted that freely. 'Of course, of course! Landless folk. There are enemies of the kind, one knows: homophagists, cannibals, God knows what: crows, hawks, jays! Naturally, one can't see one's children devoured before one's eyes. But men of property, a settled nation - did you think the Germans would eat your children, by any chance?'

'Well, we did think almost that at one time,' I confessed. He laughed quite pleasantly.

'How comical! But one gets flustered now and again then one makes a fool of one's self.' I owned that one did. He looked quizzically at me as he pursued his advantage.

'Supposing that you really thought the Germans would kill your children, do you now think that they would have killed as many as you yourselves caused to be killed in defense of them? It seems unlikely. One would suppose that the Germans would have other things to do if they had come here.'

'Britons,' I firmly said, 'never will be slaves.'

He lifted his beak, perhaps his eyebrows, but I could see none. 'Slaves! Well that, of course, is a relative term. The question should have been -our question would have beenWould invasion, even occupation, by the Germans interfere with the Great Affair?'

'You mean ..
. .' I said.

He replied severely, 'There is only one Great Affair.' He left it at that, and left me, too. We did not meet again for some days.

II

A warm, still evening after a day of sun-glare and blustering wind-the wind which we call a 'tucking wind' in these parts. I heard him piping in the yew-hedge on the border line of his country, and presently found him, high-perched upon one of the tomes of the huge clump which we know as the Kremlin. 'Hulloa,' I said; he lightly replied with a 'Hulloa yourself,' and then dropped down within chatting range. That made things much easier for me. I can never talk up to a man on a ladder.

I said, to begin with, that he had given me a great deal to think about; that his point of view differed very much from ours in nothing more than in the exclusive importance he

attached to what he called the Great Affair. Knowing him touchy upon that subject, marking, indeed, a premonitory ruffling of plumage, I hastened to suggest other matters which seemed to us of perhaps equal weight. I instanced Religion, Discovery, Art, as causes for which a man might forswear father, mother, wife and even children. 'Love .' I began: he chuckled then checked himself.

'Aren't you confusing ends and means, possibly?' he asked. 'Just consider. What sort of a religion is it which moves you to neglect your duty? What purpose is there in Discovery which cannot better your race? As for Art-well, that is an embroidery of life. One does not commit suicide for the sake of a pretty nest.'

'Sacrifice. . .' I murmured; 'pursuit of the ideal . . .' He leapt hastily into the air.

'Oh, sacrifice!' he cried: 'God knows what we know of sacrifice! More, I believe, than you have begun to understand. Nor can you hope to understand it until you discern the Ends of sacrifice. Let me ask you this: Have you a clear notion of what Validity means? Think that out if you wish to understand our religion. Ah, sacrifice, for instance! Pursuit of the ideal! Just take the trouble to consider the claims of Validity.'

'Efficiency,' I said, 'is a term which has grown common among us of late. I don't doubt that we include much of what you cover by your "Validity.""

He looked more than doubtful. 'We'll soon see about that. Do you hold inefficiency to be a crime?'

'A misfortune, rather,' I said. He laughed.

'So I thought. My dear Sir, we are a long way off each other. I fear that I must trouble you to listen to me.'

I said that I was at his feet — which was literally true.

'With us,' he said, 'the End of life is attained when we have carried on the race to the limit of our forces. We do not recongize any other commandment; we do not look to any future but that of the race. To ensure Validity, therefore, is the whole duty of Bird. The greatest crime I could commit would be to become in-valid; the greatest crime my neighbors could commit would be to suffer me to exist, being in-valid.

'Let me understand once for all,' I interposed. 'By in-valid you mean incapable of the Great Affair?'

"That only.'

'And they would put you to death!' I cried. 'If you were ill, if you were maimed?'

'Undoubtedly they would.'

'Life, then has no sanctity among you?'

'It has so much sanctity,' he said plainly, that death has none. Life insists on continuance at all costs yours, mine, or another's, it matters not a straw. When Validity ceases, life is negligible, and an offense.'

'I know,' I said slowly, thinking as I spoke, 'I know that you take death very lightly. I have observed that for myself. You seem to have no associations, no memories — '

'When you are dead,' he replied, 'you cease to exist. If you cease to exist you are not there. You are elsewhere. We say, you are in your race, which cannot die. Certainly you are not in what you leave behind you, stark on the ground.'

"We,' I said, 'reverence the dead for what they once were.'

'You seem foolish to me,' he answered. 'What you once were is elsewhere. Reverence that.'

I felt the rebuke. My eyes sank before the unblinking ring of one of his. Presently he resumed.

'and take example from my nation. Don't you understand how far we carry that principle? Don't you know that to defend life we will cheerfully lose it?'

I struck in. 'Nobody can deny that virtue at least to us,' I said. 'In our late war tens-of-thousands of our young men laid down their lives without one look backward.'

'And how many tens-of-thousands of young Germans laid down theirs?' he asked me. I see I must be plainer yet with you. Consider the enemy of all birds, whom we call the Strumpetand rightly so, for she alone in our genus claims the services of many males, and she alone is careless of her own race. Think for a moment of what many and many a poor couple will do in whose nest the Great Strumpet spawns her lust-begotten egg. Day by day that monstrous nakedness swells and spreads, hour by hour from the yawning gullet comes the howling for food. They see their flesh and blood cast out, crushed, throttled, suffocated. There is no more end to the tragedy than to the clamor and inordinate desire. The world resounds with them: death is abroad, with life in the midst of it, evil, insatiate, enemy, alien, — but Life. What do the parents but spend themselves on the tyrant which is murdering their young? They feed the death-dealer even though by that very act he be enabled to deal further death. More than that, the countryside is under contribution, bringing in provision to her who hereafter will levy more ruin and death. You prate to me of your religion-you to me? Ah, when your people, who dread the Germans, for religion's sake feed German children, then you may measure religions with mine. But that is not yet.' His neck feathers stood dangerously out, his golden beak remained open. I feared the pip for him; but he shook himself,

'Reverence, rather, Life,' he said, and made excuses.

'Forgive me. I was warm. Naturally, I feel strongly on these matters. The Cuckoo Peril is constantly before us. Only lately a near relative of ours was a victim.'

I said that it must be particularly hateful to his own race, considering the strictness of its views of the marriage state. Polygamy was a different matter, almost involved in patriarchy. That he allowed, but was struck by

my suggestion that polyandry was perhaps only an extension of the matriarchal system. He could not allow it, however, on reflection. 'No, no, it is promiscuity, neither more nor less. It is no better than a house sparrow. But we have wandered from the point. The subject is a very painful one.

The conversation, once broken off, was not resumed. His wife had called him, and he hastened away.

A PEOPLE OF DREAMS

BY ROBERT KEABLE

From The Hibbert Journal, April (ENGLISH RELIGIOUS QUARTERLY)

THAT dreams should play a great part in the life of a Bantu people is not surprising, but to those who know them, it may well remain a matter of no little interest that the subconscious state should occupy so much of the attention of the Basuto. For the Basuto, but one branch of the Bantu stock, are nevertheless one of the most civilized branches. Missions have been at work among them for three-quarters of a century; a school is a feature of nearly every large village, at least in the more accessible parts of the country; and even up remote valleys all but untrodden of white men, the native is clothed and far advanced from a state of precarious savagery. The Basuto edit their own newspapers, quite largely send their sons to college, and have already produced qualified medical men, lawyers, and a novelist. Moreover, the war enlarged their vision. The other day the first aeroplane passed over Mont-aux-Sources, and a

headman in an out-of-the-way village was aroused from his afternoon siesta by his excited and terrified wives, who who could give no clear statement as to this new terror. But Mpanzi took but one look at the heavens. 'You fools,' he said, 'have you not heard of aeroplanes before? I saw them everyday in France. Disturb me no more till the cows come home.' And he went back to sleep!

It is the more interesting, then, that civilization has done little or nothing to shake their faith in dreams, and that, despite doctors and hospitals, they still for the greater part say and believe of a man unconscious that he is dead. The resurrection is no stumbling-block to the intellectual Basuto. My own district in my own time produced a prophet who died and rose again from the dead, and who drew excited crowds after him. He visited me, dressed far better than I in European clothes, and accompanied by two natives, intro

duced respectively to me as his chaplain and his secretary. Moreover, he was very far from being a charlatan out to establish a sect or to make money. Those converted by his teaching he sent to the nearest missionary, of whatever denomination he might be, with a small slip of paper certifying that so and so wished to become a Christian. I had probably two hundred such in all, who went regularly through their three-year course of instruction, and of whom the greater part were baptized.

This belief of theirs is indeed a most important factor in missionary work, and any would-be successful missionary must take it into consideration. Thus, in my own case, I ran my head at first against this brick wall. I had come from East Africa, where Christianity is opposed by resolute systems - Islam, Islam, and a definite organised heathenism with classified devils and exorcisms committed to writing. In Basutoland no other system opposes the Christian Faith. I have never met a heathen who did not admit that Christianity was the only true religion. On all big occasions the heathen will come to church. Unbaptized chiefs, almost without exception, are eager to have a church and school in their village. Personally, then, I could see no reason, other than that a man might prefer to be drunken unreproved and have many wives, why the heathen should not convert in far greater numbers than they did.

But there was a reason, and I discovered it when I approached individually certain persons whose cases seemed to be the most bewildering. To take an example: there was an old man, the husband of but one wife, and she a Christian, no excessive drinker, and a most decent and delightful personage. He was, moreover, the brother of one of our earliest and most faithful

Christians. He sent me gifts whenever I visited his village, and was frequent at such services as our discipline allowed him to attend. But he remained a heathen. Not until he knew me well would he give me a reason for his obstinacy: but then it came out. He had had no 'call.' It was useless for me to urge that God had done His part in the scheme of salvation; that my own presence and preaching constituted a call'; and that nothing remained for him but to accept. He awaited a supernatural occurrence; at times, more definitely, he would say he had had no 'dream.' And he died, dreamless and unbaptized.

Incidentally, and to conclude this portion of our subject, it is worth saying that I attribute a great deal of the success that unquestionably attended the work of the mission in my own district to the attitude which I readily adopted toward this matter. I find no personal difficulty whatever in the supernatural. The drift of pinions, would we hearken, beats at our own close-shuttered doors. What I know of science seems to me but to open unexpected windows through which one views increasingly fresh vistas of mystery. The more I have had experience of the world's remoter places, the more sympathetic do I become. I read of theophanies on every page of the Bible; I should have to disbelieve all human evidence if I did not see them in every century of the Church's life; and I have found my world encompassed with that which has no other explanation. The modern attitude seems to be that science will explain all one day. Maybe. It will assuredly open other windows than we wot of to-day. But if I am there to see, I expect increasingly to look through with interest deepened and with faith confirmed.

As a result of this, I did not laugh at

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