The Wimsey Papers Read Free Page B

disturber of the Roman peace, he, too, thought he had settled that troublesome matter for ever; but he was mistaken.

In this world there is a continual activity, a perpetual struggle between good and evil, and the victory of the moment is always for the side that is the more active. Of late years, the evil has been more active and alert in us than the good - that is why we find ourselves again plunged into war. Even evil, you see, cannot prosper unless it practises at least one virtue - the virtue of diligence. Good, well-meaning, peaceable people often fail by slipping into the sin of sloth, that is what our Lord meant when he said that the children of this world were wiser in their generation than the children of light. He commended them for it and told us to imitate them. Because if Christian men and women would put as much work and intelligence into being generous and just as others do into being ambitious and covetous and aggressive, the world would be a very much better place, and there would not be nearly so many occasions of warfare.

We often quote the Sermon on the Mount, as though that were the only pronouncement Christ ever made about peace, but He said a good deal more than that - some of it very strange, and looking very contradictory. "Think not that I came to bring peace unto the world; I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And when He saw that the time for peace had gone by, He said, "now, he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." He reminded Peter that "they that take the sword shall perish by the sword" - but that was all He said would happen, and He said also, "Fear not them that kill the body." The sin that was worse than violence, that incurred a heavier penalty than death, was a cold and sneering spirit; "He that saith unto his brother, thou fool, is in danger of hell-fire." Yet He is called the Prince of Peace - "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you." He thought of peace, you see, as something that happens inside the mind - something extra bestowed as a gift when we are going about our work in a spirit of active faith.

On this Armistice Sunday, don't let us think of peace as something that concerns governments, statesmen, other people: let us consider what we can do, each one of us, here and now, to make the world better, in the hope and faith that peace may be given to us as a result. ...

5. Letter from Miss Agnes Twitterton, of Great Pagford, Herts, to a Friend at Worthing. (Extract.)

Sunday evening, 19th November, 1939

... So I rushed over to the Vicarage, and there was Mr. Goodacre taking dead leaves out of the bird-bath. "Oh, Vicar," I said, "what has happened? I've played the voluntary twelve times, and it's a quarter past eleven, and there's not a soul in church." So he said, "My dear Miss Twitterton, didn't you put your clock back?" - So that just shows you how war upsets everybody, for if there is one thing I never forget...

6. From Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad.

FLAT 718, UTOPIA COURT,
OXFORD STREET, W.
Sunday, Nov. 19th (24th after Trinity).

My dear Lord Peter,

I am just seizing a moment this evening to write you a little letter PERSONALLY: of course all the reports have been duly send in every week regularly to the PROPER QUARTER - and I must tell you again how proud and delighted all the members of the "Cattery" (to use your own humourous phrase!) are feeling to know that they are really being of use to their country in this terrible time of emergency. Especially the older ones - because it is so humiliating and depressing when one comes to a certain age, to feel that one is NOT WANTED, and though you are always so wonderfully sympathetic, I'm sure even you can't realise the callousness, well really one might almost say cruelty, with which older women are sometimes treated when they apply for employment, either in a national or a civil capacity. Would you believe