" It showed that for a time Benham
had been greatly obsessed by the thought of the armaments that were
in those days piling up in every country in Europe. He had gone to
Essen, and at Essen he had met a German who had boasted of Zeppelins
and the great guns that were presently to smash the effete British
fleet and open the Imperial way to London.
"I could not sleep," he wrote, "on account of this man and his talk
and the streak of hatred in his talk. He distressed me not because
he seemed exceptional, but because he seemed ordinary. I realized
that he was more human than I was, and that only killing and killing
could come out of such humanity. I thought of the great ugly guns I
had seen, and of the still greater guns he had talked about, and how
gloatingly he thought of the destruction they could do. I felt as I
used to feel about that infernal stallion that had killed a man with
its teeth and feet, a despairing fear, a sense of monstrosity in
life. And this creature who had so disturbed me was only a beastly
snuffy little man in an ill-fitting frock-coat, who laid his knife
and fork by their tips on the edge of his plate, and picked his
teeth with gusto and breathed into my face as he talked to me.
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