[Rising.
You carry it off well. I couldn't bluff the way you can. I haven't your religious feeling. I know why I want war. It's because I'm a manufacturer of guns. Everybody knows my business, and they know that if there wasn't war or a fear of war constantly, I and my wife and children would starve. War is my work and it's been my work most of my life. And I've worked for this war because it was the biggest thing in sight. I've worked for it with all the brains I've got, just as I'd have worked for two-hundred-egg hens if I'd been a chicken farmer. I'm not a sentimentalist. Besides, war's a good thing occasionally. I believe that absolutely. It quiets down your socialists, cuts down your superfluous population, increases the moral stamina of the nation. A lot of this talk of war being hell is mush. A few people get shot up, but no one forced 'em to go. It's their own funeral.
grosvenor
No, Conroy, no. I don't agree with you. I may possibly not lose financially by this war, but nevertheless, war is terrible, awful. The Christian sense balks at it. Only, I feel this way, sometimes when the honor of the nation demands—
conroy
You damn bluff!
grosvenor
[Confronting him.
Conroy! If you please!
[pollen, a tall, thin man in the late forties, enters left. He has an impassive, intellectual face, interesting though unsympathetic. His manner is calm and quietly alert, suggestive of reserve power.