“I agree.”
“Perhaps you do not realize that you and your friends, the members of this infamous International Newspaper Ring, are no longer to be permitted to carry out the policy for which you stand.”
“What is the policy for which we stand?”
“Giantism—world-power—in other words, enslavement and spoliation of the weak.”
“Arrant nonsense!”
“We shall gain nothing,” said Lien Weng “by bandying words. It has taken the Society of the Friends of Peace many months to reach a conclusion in this case of yours; and it has done so only after complete investigation of all the salient facts. Understand, sir, that all its verdicts are based upon reason, and that once moved to action it pursues an undeviating, a relentless course.”
Saul Hartz made a gesture of contempt. “You are an illegal body. At best you are a murder club. You stand outside the law.”
“Not outside the moral law. Take the case of the teeming, helpless millions of my Chinese compatriots for whom I speak, of those millions of unlucky creatures who know themselves impotent to deal with the marvelous physical forces now controlled by the western mind. For months, through the agency of your terrible engine the Universal Press, you have been inciting your Government to shatter Peking. For months, to this end you have been organizing public opinion by means of false news and distorted facts. Once the die is cast the yellow and black races are powerless to cope with the airships, the poison gases, the high explosives, the dread magics the civilization of the West is able to hurl upon them. Not a month ago you caused to be wiped out of existence, by means of bombs rained from the clouds, a native village in the heart of Africa. Not a year ago a similar thing occurred in Afghanistan in Upper India.”
“You would hold me responsible for that?”
“Indirectly—yes. Or to look nearer home, consider the case of Ireland.”