Asher.  Wicked?

Timothy.  Isn’t it the old fashioned nation we’re fighting, with its kings and emperors and generals that would crush the life and freedom out of them that need life.  And why wouldn’t the men have the right to organize, sir, the way that they’d have a word to say about what they’d be doing?

Asher.  You—­you ask me to sacrifice my principles and yield to men who are deliberately obstructing the war?

Timothy.  Often times principles is nothing but pride, sir.  And it might be yourself that’s obstructing the war, when with a simple word from you they’d go on working.

Asher (agitatedly).  I can’t, I won’t recognize a labour union!

Timothy.  Have patience, sir.  I know ye’ve a kind heart, and that ye’ve always acted according to your light, the same as me.  But there’s more light now, sir,—­it’s shining through the darkness, brighter than the flashes of the cannon over there.  In the moulding room just now it seems to break all around me, and me crying like a child because the boy was gone.  There was things I hadn’t seen before or if I saw them, it was only dim-like, to trouble me (Asher turns away) the same as you are troubled now.  And to think it’s me that would pity you, Mr. Pindar!  I says to myself, I’ll talk to him.  I ain’t got no learning, I can’t find the words I’m after—­but maybe I can persuade him it ain’t the same world we’re living in.

Asher.  I was ready to recognize that.  Before they came to me this morning I had made a plan to reorganize the shops, to grant many privileges.

Timothy.  You’ll excuse me, sir, but it’s what they don’t want,—­anyone to be granting them privileges, but to stand on their own feet, the same as you.  I never rightly understood until just now,—­and that because I was always looking up, while you’d be looking down, and seeing nothing but the bent backs of them.  It’s inside we must be looking, sir,—­and God made us all the same, you and me, and Mr. George and my son Bert, and the Polak and his wife and childher.  It’s the strike in every one of us, sir,—­and half the time we’d not know why we’re striking!

Asher.  You’re right there, Timothy

Timothy.  But that makes no difference, sir.  It’s what we can’t be reasoning, but the nature in us all—­

   (He flings his arm toward the open windows.)

—­like the flowers and the trees in the doctor’s garden groping to the light of the sun.  Maybe the one’ll die for lack of the proper soil, and many is cruelly trampled on, but the rest’ll be growing, and none to stop ’em.

Asher (pacing to the end of the room, and turning).  No, I won’t listen to it!  You—­you ask me to yield to them, when you have lost your son, when they’re willing to sacrifice—­to murder my son on the field of battle?

   (He pauses and looks toward the doorway, right.  Dr. Jonathan
   standing there, holding in his hand a yellow envelope.  Asher
   starts forward.)