Explore "The Black Godmother" by John Galsworthy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sitting out on the lawn at tea with our friend and his retriever, we had been discussing those massacres of the helpless which had of late occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The cause of atrocities is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the back of most crimes and follies."
Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was if we asked him -- such being his nature -- we were careful not to agree.