"
"So do I," Furley assented, "but is Fenn's report of his promises
and the strength of his followers entirely honest?"
"That's the part of the whole thing I don't like," Julian
acknowledged. "Fenn's practically the corner stone of this
affair. It was he who met Freistner in Amsterdam and started
these negotiations, and I'm damned if I like Fenn, or trust him.
Did you see the way he looked at Stenson out of the corners of his
eyes, like a little ferret? Stenson was at his best, too. I
never admired the man more."
"He certainly kept his head," Furley agreed. "His few straight
words were to the point, too."
"It wasn't the occasion for eloquence," Julian declared. "That'll
come next week. I suppose he'll try and break the Trades Unions.
What a chance for an Edmund Burke! It's all right, I suppose, but
I wonder why I'm feeling so damned miserable."
"The fact is," Furley confided, "you and I and the Bishop and
Miss Abbeway are all to a certain extent out of place on that
Council. We ought to have contented ourselves with having
supplied the ideas. When it comes to the practical side, our
other instincts revolt. After all, if we believed that by
continuing the war we could beat Germany from a military point of
view, I suppose we should forget a lot of this admirable reasoning
of ours and let it go on."
"It doesn't seem a fair bargain, though," Julian sighed. "It's
the lives of our men to-day for the freedom of their descendants,
if that isn't frittered away by another race of politicians.
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