"Oh, I agree. But that's precisely what we've got to kill." Gaythorpe was so eager that he raised a finger. Edgar leaned forward, his face no longer at all grave. He looked at the old man with compassion.
"Travel, my friend. You'll become a defeatist," he said. "Nationalism's such an easy thing to teach. Besides, selfishness is the gospel of the day. You really must take human beings into account. How are you going to move them? Not by altruism. There are good men, who think in good-will; but they can't imagine other men in bulk. They talk about Germans, or wages, or exports; but they don't feel reality when they do that. I mean, not the reality of wine upset or a train to catch or a toothache. It's all like casting a column of figures. They don't feel themselves personally affected. Any more than they do when they talk of stabilising the world. No. The only thing is to work for some defined clash, to formulate an altruistic policy and give it a selfish aim. Then embark on a campaign of propaganda, showing that it pays to be good and do right—that it's going to reduce income tax or the cost of petrol. Enlarge your group. Make it first English—Anglo-Saxon—European—then World-wide. But you've got to make it a party policy, an issue. Have a scrap—a scrap of ideas and convictions. Divide England into two fierce political camps, and restore political life in England. Then carry your policy into action. You could sweep the world in a generation."
Gaythorpe good-humouredly shook his head.
"It's an altruistic resolution in itself," he objected. "You'd be bankrupt long before you succeeded. You'd have burnt your house to roast your pig. But I'm glad to find you such an idealist. If you carry such principles into your private life it must be exciting. All the same, rather Quixotic."
Edgar laughed slightly.
"Oh," he said. "As to private life, I'm a sentimentalist like yourself."
"I wonder." Gaythorpe pondered.
"On the surface. It's self interest at bottom, I expect. If I try to do good it's to gratify myself. I want other people to do what I think is good for them."
Gaythorpe was pleased at the turn which Edgar's remarks had taken, because Edgar too seldom spoke about himself, and this was a subject which interested Gaythorpe, who was really human, more than most others. Further, this was a side of Edgar which he did not know, and it had its attractiveness upon that score also.
"If you try to help them," Gaythorpe suggested, "it must be from disinterested good-will."