“I do.”
“And you say the Swiss are mercenary, as a parrot says ‘Poor Poll,’ or as the Belgians here say the English are not brave, or as the French accuse them of being perfidious: there is no justice in your dictums.”
“There is truth.”
“I tell you, Mr. Hunsden, you are a more unpractical man than I am an unpractical woman, for you don’t acknowledge what really exists; you want to annihilate individual patriotism and national greatness as an atheist would annihilate God and his own soul, by denying their existence.”
“Where are you flying to? You are off at a tangent—I thought we were talking about the mercenary nature of the Swiss.”
“We were—and if you proved to me that the Swiss are mercenary to-morrow (which you cannot do) I should love Switzerland still.”
“You would be mad, then—mad as a March hare—to indulge in a passion for millions of shiploads of soil, timber, snow, and ice.”
“Not so mad as you who love nothing.”
“There’s a method in my madness; there’s none in yours.”
“Your method is to squeeze the sap out of creation and make manure of the refuse, by way of turning it to what you call use.”