“Now for you, colonel.
“‘No extension of the army—no! A thousand times no. Let India go, then! Good for India that we hold India? Ay, good: but not at such a cost as an extra tax, or compulsory service of our working man. If India is to be held for the good of India, throw open India to the civilized nations, that they help us in a task that overstrains us. At present India means utter perversion of the policy of England. Adrift India! rather than England red-coated. We dissent, Beauchamp! For by-and-by.’
“That is,” Captain Baskelett explained, “by-and-by Shrapnel will have old Nevil fast enough.”
“Is there more of it?” said Colonel Halkett, flapping his forehead for coolness.
“The impudence of this dog in presuming to talk about India!—eh, colonel? Only a paragraph or two more: I skip a lot.... Ah! here we are.” Captain Baskelett read to himself and laughed in derision: “He calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number involved in it. What’s this? ‘A band of dealers in fleshpottery.’ Do you detect a gleam of sense? He underscores it. Then he comes to this”: Captain Baskelett requested Colonel Halkett to read for himself: “The stench of the trail of Ego in our History.”
The colonel perused it with an unsavoury expression of his features, and jumped up.
“Oddly, Mr. Romfrey thought this rather clever,” said Captain Baskelett, and read rapidly: “‘Trace the course of Ego for them: first the king who conquers and can govern. In his egoism he dubs him holy; his family is of a selected blood; he makes the crown hereditary—Ego. Son by son the shame of egoism increases; valour abates; hereditary Crown, no hereditary qualities. The Barons rise. They in turn hold sway, and for their order—Ego. The traders overturn them: each class rides the classes under it while it can. It is ego—ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war! Then death to ego, I say! If those traders had ruled for other than ego, power might have rested with them on broad basis enough to carry us forward for centuries. The workmen have ever been too anxious to be ruled. Now comes on the workman’s era. Numbers win in the end: proof of small wisdom in the world. Anyhow, with numbers there is rough nature’s wisdom and justice. With numbers ego is inter-dependent and dispersed; it is universalized. Yet these may require correctives. If so, they will have it in a series of despots and revolutions that toss, mix, and bind the classes together: despots, revolutions; panting alternations of the quickened heart of humanity:’ marked by our friend Nevil in notes of admiration.”
“Mad as the writer,” groaned Colonel Halkett. “Never in my life have I heard such stuff.”
“Stay, colonel; here’s Shrapnel defending Morality and Society,” said Captain Baskelett.
Colonel Halkett vowed he was under no penal law to listen, and would not; but Captain Baskelett persuaded him: “Yes, here it is: I give you my word. Apparently old Nevil has been standing up for every man’s right to run away with... Yes, really! I give you my word; and here we have Shrapnel insisting on respect for the marriage laws. Do hear this; here it is in black and white:—‘Society is our one tangible gain, our one roofing and flooring in a world of most uncertain structures built on morasses. Toward the laws that support it men hopeful of progress give their adhesion. If it is martyrdom, what then? Let the martyrdom be. Contumacy is animalism. And attend to me,’ says Shrapnel, ‘the truer the love the readier for sacrifice! A thousand times yes. Rebellion against Society, and advocacy of Humanity, run counter. Tell me Society is the whited sepulchre, that it is blotched, hideous, hollow: and I say, add not another disfigurement to it; add to the purification of it. And you, if you answer, what can only one? I say that is the animal’s answer, and applies also to politics, where the question, what can one? put in the relapsing tone, shows the country decaying in the individual. Society is the protection of the weaker, therefore a shield of women, who are our temple of civilization, to be kept sacred; and he that loves a woman will assuredly esteem and pity her sex, and not drag her down for another example of their frailty. Fight this out within you—!’