BURGE. God knows I have often felt that I could not go on if it had not been for the sense that I was only an instrument in the hands of a Power above us.
CONRAD. I'm glad you both agree with us, and with one another.
LUBIN. I have not gone so far as that, I think. After all, we have had many very able political leaders even within your recollection and mine.
FRANKLYN. Have you read the recent biographies—Dilke's, for instance—which revealed the truth about them?
LUBIN. I did not discover any new truth revealed in these books, Mr Barnabas.
FRANKLYN. What! Not the truth that England was governed all that time by a little woman who knew her own mind?
SAVVY. Hear, hear!
LUBIN. That often happens. Which woman do you mean?
FRANKLYN. Queen Victoria, to whom your Prime Ministers stood in the relation of naughty children whose heads she knocked together when their tempers and quarrels became intolerable. Within thirteen years of her death Europe became a hell.
SURGE. Quite true. That was because she was piously brought up, and regarded herself as an instrument. If a statesman remembers that he is only an instrument, and feels quite sure that he is rightly interpreting the divine purpose, he will come out all right, you know.