"
"Their duty!" Robert repeated, with smothered scorn. "Their duty
to a squirming nest of cowardly politicians--begging your pardon,
sir. Why, the whole Government isn't worth the blood of one of
them!"
"I am sorry about Fred," Julian said sympathetically. "All the
same, Robert, you must try and pull yourself together."
The man groaned.
"Pull myself together!" he said angrily. "Mr. Orden, sir, I'm
trying to keep respectful, but it's a hard thing. I've been
reading the evening papers. There's an article, signed `Paul
Fiske', in the Pall Mall. They tell me that you're Paul Fiske.
You're for peace, it seems--for peace with the German Emperor and
his bloody crew."
"I am in favour of peace on certain terms, at the earliest
possible moment," Julian admitted.
"That's where you've sold us, then--sold us all!" Robert declared
fiercely. "My boys died believing they were fighting for men who
would keep their word. The war was to go on till victory was
won.. They died happily, believing that those who had spoken for
England would keep their word. You're very soft-hearted in that
article, sir, about the living. Did you think, when you sat down
to write it, about the dead?--about that wilderness of white
crosses out in France? You're proposing in cold blood to let
those devils stay on their own dunghill."
"It is a very large question, Robert," Julian reminded him. "The
war is fast reaching a period of mutual exhaustion."
The man threw all restraint to the winds.
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