“And use it to tell other people to upset the Government!  That crowd to-night did what you tell your people to do—­went against the rules.  But you can’t take your own medicine.  A fine bunch of spoiled children you are!  Been spoiled by too easy a Government at that!” He broke off to study Merle again.  “You’re pasty, out of condition,” he repeated, inconsequently.

Again his brother’s intolerant smile.

“You have all the cant of the reactionary,” he retorted, again gently.  “It’s the spirit of intolerance one finds everywhere.  You can’t expect one of my—­” he hesitated, showing a slight impatience.  “I’ve been too long where they are thinking,” he said.

“Aren’t you people intolerant?  You want to break all the rules, and those same rules have made us a pretty good big country.”

“Ah, yes, a big country—­big!  We can always boast of our size, can’t we?  I dare say you believe its bigness is a sign of our merit.”  Merle had recovered his poise.  He was at home in satire.  “Besides, I’ve broken no rules, as you call them.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you haven’t!  You’d be careful not to.  I see that much.  But you try to get smaller children to.  I’d have more patience with you if you’d taken a chance yourself.”

“Patience with me—­you?” Merle relished this.  His laugh was sincere.  “You—­would have more patience with—­me!” But his irony went for little with a man still at the front.

“Sure!  If only you’d smashed a few rules yourself.  Take that girl and her partner they arrested the other day.  They don’t whine.  They’re behind the bars, but still cussing the Government.  You’ve got to respect fighters like that Liebknecht the Germans killed, and that Rosa What’s-Her-Name.  They were game.  But you people, you try to put on all their airs without taking their chances.  That’s why you make me so tired—­always keeping your martyr’s halo polished and handy where you can slip it out of a pocket when you get just what you’ve been asking for.”

“You’re not too subtle, are you?  But then one could hardly expect subtlety—­”

Merle was again almost annoyed.

“Subtle be jiggered!  Do you think you people are subtle?  About as subtle as a ton of bricks.  All your talk in that magazine about this being a land of the dollar, no ideals, no spirituality, a land of money-grubbers—­all that other stuff!  Say, I want to tell you this is the least money-grubbing land there is!  You people would know that if you had any subtlety.  Maybe you did know it.  We went into that scrap for an ideal, and we’re the only country that did.  France might have gone for an ideal, but France had to fight, anyway.

“England?  Do you think England went in only to save poor little Belgium?  She herself was the next dish on the bill of fare.  But we went in out of general damfoolishness—­for an ideal—­this country you said didn’t have any.  We don’t care about money—­less than any of those people.  Watch a Frenchman count his coppers, or an Englishman that carries his in a change purse and talks about pounds but really thinks in shillings.  We carry our money loose and throw it away.