“Who?”
“Both sides.”
“I hope so,” I said.
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t believe both sides will stop fighting at once.”
“I suppose not. It is too much to expect. But when I see the changes in men I do not think it can go on.”
‘Who won the fighting this summer?”
“No one.”
“The Austrians won,” I said. “They kept them from taking San Gabriele. They’ve won. They won’t stop fighting.”
“If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing.”
“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”
“You discourage me.”
“I can only say what I think.”
“Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”
“I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”
“The Austrians are Christians—except for the Bosnians.”
“I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”
He said nothing.
“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”
“He would have been just the same.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close.”
