Banning.  It’d be no friendliness to give you a wrong impression of the state of feeling.  Silence—­till the bitterness is overpast; there’s naught else for it, Mr. More, while you feel as you do.  That tongue of yours!  Come!  You owe us something.  You’re a big man; it’s the big view you ought to take.

More.  I am trying to.

Home.  And what precisely is your view—­you’ll pardon my asking?

More. [Turning on him] Mr. Home a great country such as ours—­is trustee for the highest sentiments of mankind.  Do these few outrages justify us in stealing the freedom of this little people?

Banning.  Steal—­their freedom!  That’s rather running before the hounds.

More.  Ah, Banning! now we come to it.  In your hearts you’re none of you for that—­neither by force nor fraud.  And yet you all know that we’ve gone in there to stay, as we’ve gone into other lands—­as all we big Powers go into other lands, when they’re little and weak.  The Prime Minister’s words the other night were these:  “If we are forced to spend this blood and money now, we must never again be forced.”  What does that mean but swallowing this country?

Shelder.  Well, and quite frankly, it’d be no bad thing.

Home.  We don’t want their wretched country—­we’re forced.

More.  We are not forced.

Shelder.  My dear More, what is civilization but the logical, inevitable swallowing up of the lower by the higher types of man?  And what else will it be here?

More.  We shall not agree there, Shelder; and we might argue it all day.  But the point is, not whether you or I are right—­the point is:  What is a man who holds a faith with all his heart to do?  Please tell me.

     [There is a silence.]

Banning. [Simply] I was just thinkin’ of those poor fellows in the Pass.

More.  I can see them, as well as you, Banning.  But, imagine!  Up in our own country—­the Black Valley—­twelve hundred foreign devils dead and dying—­the crows busy over them—­in our own country, our own valley—­ours—­ours—­violated.  Would you care about “the poor fellows” in that Pass?—­Invading, stealing dogs!  Kill them—­kill them!  You would, and I would, too!

     The passion of those words touches and grips as no arguments
     could; and they are silent.

More.  Well!  What’s the difference out there?  I’m not so inhuman as not to want to see this disaster in the Pass wiped out.  But once that’s done, in spite of my affection for you; my ambitions, and they’re not few; [Very low] in spite of my own wife’s feeling, I must be free to raise my voice against this war.

Banning. [Speaking slowly, consulting the others, as it were, with his eyes] Mr. More, there’s no man I respect more than yourself.  I can’t tell what they’ll say down there when we go back; but I, for one, don’t feel it in me to take a hand in pressing you farther against your faith.