“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.
“Claptrap!” was his angry reply. “You wealthy people want your fleshpots again. We’ve a few more million men, haven’t we? America has a few more millions?”
“Your own loss, Robert, has made you—and quite naturally, too—very bitter,” his master said gently. “You must let those who have thought this matter out come to a decision upon it. Beyond a certain point, the manhood of the world must be conserved.”
“That sounds just like fine talk to me, sir, and no more; the sort of stuff that’s printed in articles and that no one takes much stock of. Words were plain enough when we started out to fight this war. We were going to crush the German military spirit and not leave off fighting until we’d done it. There was nothing said then about conserving millions of men. It was to be fought out to the end, whatever it cost.”
“And you were once a pacifist!”
“Pacifist!” the man repeated passionately. “Every human being with common sense was a pacifist when the war started.”
“But the war was forced upon us,” Julian reminded him. “You can’t deny that.”