"You unendurable snob!" said Benham, and then lapsing into the
forceful and inadvisable: "By Heaven, you SHALL eat it! . . ."
8
Benham's detestation of human divisions and hostilities was so deep
in his character as to seem almost instinctive. But he had too a
very clear reason for his hostility to all these amazing breaks in
human continuity in his sense of the gathering dangers they now
involve. They had always, he was convinced, meant conflict, hatred,
misery and the destruction of human dignity, but the new conditions
of life that have been brought about by modern science were making
them far more dangerous than they had ever been before. He believed
that the evil and horror of war was becoming more and more
tremendous with every decade, and that the free play of national
prejudice and that stupid filching ambitiousness that seems to be
inseparable from monarchy, were bound to precipitate catastrophe,
unless a real international aristocracy could be brought into being
to prevent it.
In the drawer full of papers labelled "Politics," White found a
paper called "The Metal Beast.
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