Lincoln:  I beg you not to harass yourself, madam.  Ma’am, I too believe war to be wrong.  It is the weakness and the jealousy and the folly of men that make a thing so wrong possible.  But we are all weak, and jealous, and foolish.  That’s how the world is, ma’am, and we cannot outstrip the world.  Some of the worst of us are sullen, aggressive still—­just clumsy, greedy pirates.  Some of us have grown out of that.  But the best of us have an instinct to resist aggression if it won’t listen to persuasion.  You may say it’s a wrong instinct.  I don’t know.  But it’s there, and it’s there in millions of good men.  I don’t believe it’s a wrong instinct, I believe that the world must come to wisdom slowly.  It is for us who hate aggression to persuade men always and earnestly against it, and hope that, little by little, they will hear us.  But in the mean time there will come moments when the aggressors will force the instinct to resistance to act.  Then we must act earnestly, praying always in our courage that never again will this thing happen.  And then we must turn again, and again, and again to persuasion.  This appeal to force is the misdeed of an imperfect world.  But we are imperfect.  We must strive to purify the world, but we must not think ourselves pure above the world.  When I had this thing to decide, it would have been easy to say, “No, I will have none of it; it is evil, and I will not touch it.”  But that would have decided nothing, and I saw what I believed to be the truth as I now put it to you, ma’am.  It’s a forlorn thing for any man to have this responsibility in his heart.  I may see wrongly, but that’s how I see.

Mrs. Blow:  I quite agree with you, Mr. President.  These brutes in the South must be taught, though I doubt whether you can teach them anything except by destroying them.  That’s what Goliath says.

Lincoln:  Goliath must be getting quite an old man.

Mrs. Blow:  Indeed, he’s not, Mr. President Goliath is only thirty-eight.

Lincoln:  Really, now?  Perhaps I might be able to get him a commission.

Mrs. Blow:  Oh, no.  Goliath couldn’t be spared.  He’s doing contracts for the government, you know.  Goliath couldn’t possibly go.  I’m sure he will be very pleased when I tell him what you say about these people who want to stop the war, Mr. President.  I hope Mrs. Otherly is satisfied.  Of course, we could all complain.  We all have to make sacrifices, as I told Mrs. Otherly.

Mrs. Otherly:  Thank you, Mr. President, for what you’ve said.  I must try to think about it.  But I always believed war to be wrong.  I didn’t want my boy to go, because I believed it to be wrong.  But he would.  That came to me last week.

She hands a paper to LINCOLN.

Lincoln (looks at it, rises, and hands it back to her):  Ma’am, there are times when no man may speak.  I grieve for you, I grieve for you.