But she used his retort for an opening.
"Oh, I'd rather you would do that than jest! It's human. It's going to war because one is angry. You would go to war as a matter of cold reason."
"If otherwise, I should lose," he replied.
"Exactly. You make it easy for me to approach my point. I want to prevent you from losing!" she announced cheerfully yet very seriously.
"Yes? Proceed. I brace myself against an explosion of indignation!"
"It is the duty of a teacher of peace to use all her influence with the people she knows," she went on. "So I am going to ask you not to let your country ever go to war against mine while you are chief of staff."
"Mine against yours?" he equivocated. "Why, you live almost within gunshot of the line! Your people have as much Gray as Brown blood in their veins, Your country! My country! Isn't that patriotism?"
"Patriotism, but not martial patriotism," she corrected him. "My thought is to stop war for both countries as war, regardless of sides. Promise me that you will not permit it!"
"I not permit it!" He smiled with the kindly patronage of a great man who sees a charming woman floundering in an attempt at logic. "It is for the premier to say. I merely make the machine ready. The government says the word that makes it move. I able to stop war! Come, come!"
"But you can—yes, you can with a word!" she declared positively.