To Basil Prince, in the fore-shortening of retrospect, all the gradual amendments of life, as he had known them in their enactment, stood forth at once in a gigantic composition of contrasts; heroically pictured on a single canvas.
"Now," he reflected, "we hear the younger generation speak with a pitying indulgence of the archaic stodginess of mid-Victorian ideas—and, my God, sir, that was all only yesterday, and this mid-Victorian thought was revolutionary in its newness and its advancement! I can remember when it startled the world: when Tennyson was accounted a wild radical, and Darwin a voice savouring strongly of heresy."
McCalloway filled a fresh pipe. He sent out a cloud of tobacco smoke and set back his shoulders.
"In my belief, your radical poet said one true thing at least," he observed.
"... I doubt not through the ages, one increasing purpose runs.
"That purpose lies towards the swallowing of the local, and the individualistic, the national even into the international. It lies toward the broadest federation of ideals that can exist in harmony." He paused there, and in the voice of one expecting contradiction, added: "And that end will not be attained in parliaments, but on the battlefield."
"The creed of Americanism," Prince reminded him, "rests on the pillars of non-interference with other states and of a minimum of meddling among our own."
"So far, yes," admitted the Scot, but his eyes held a stubborn light of argument. "Yet I predict that when the whole story of Americanism is written, it will be cast to a broader plot."
On General Prince's lips flickered a quiet smile.
"Is there a broader thing than independence?" he inquired, and the answer came back with a quick uptake.