“It won’t do.  Mark my word, if we don’t show more spirit, we shall be finding ourselves in Queer Street.  Look at China, now!  I call it a monstrous thing, perfectly monstrous, the way we’re neglecting China.”

“My dear sir,” said the other, a thin, bilious man, with an undecided manner, “we can’t force our goods on a country——­”

“What!  Why, that’s exactly what we can do, and ought to do!  What we always have done, and always must do, if we’re going to hold our own,” vociferated he of the crimson neck.  “I was speaking of China, if you hadn’t interrupted me.  What are the Russians doing?  Why, making a railway straight to China!  And we look on, as if it didn’t matter, when the matter is national life or death.  Let me give you some figures.  I know what I’m talking about.  Are you aware that our trade with China amounts to only half a crown a head of the Chinese population?  Half a crown!  While with little Japan, our trade comes to something like eighteen shillings a head.  Let me tell you that the equivalent of that in China would represent about three hundred and sixty millions per annum!”

He rolled out the figures with gusto culminating in rage.  His eyes glared; he snorted defiance, turning from his companion to the two strangers whom he saw seated before him.

“I say that it’s our duty to force our trade upon China.  It’s for China’s good—­can you deny that?  A huge country packed with wretched barbarians!  Our trade civilises them—­can you deny it?  It’s our duty, as the leading Power of the world!  Hundreds of millions of poor miserable barbarians.  And”—­he shouted—­“what else are the Russians, if you come to that?  Can they civilise China?  A filthy, ignorant nation, frozen into stupidity, and downtrodden by an Autocrat!”

“Well,” murmured the diffident objector, “I’m no friend of tyranny; I can’t say much for Russia——­”

“I should think you couldn’t.  Who can?  A country plunged in the darkness of the Middle Ages!  The country of the knout!  Pah!  Who can say anything for Russia?”

Vociferating thus, the champion of civilisation fixed his glare upon Otway, who, having laid down the paper, answered this look of challenge with a smile.

“As you seem to appeal to me,” sounded in Piers’ voice, which was steady and good-humoured, “I’m bound to say that Russia isn’t altogether without good points.  You spoke of it, by the bye, as the country of the knout; but the knout, as a matter of fact, was abolished long ago.”

“Well, well—­yes; yes—­one knows all about that,” stammered the loud man.  “But the country is still ruled in the spirit of the knout.  It doesn’t affect my argument.  Take it broadly, on an ethnological basis.”  He expanded his chest, sticking his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat.  “The Russians are a Slavonic people, I presume?”

“Largely Slav, yes.”