My oration appeared to have sent 47 to sleep. I came to a full stop. When he began, it was on a line of his own.
“An empire, an imperfect instrument, is nearer the co-operative ideal than separate states watching one another. Therefore, when Ireland, a part, demands to break away from the whole, it is an effort towards old tribal days, and I am out of sympathy. And if the whole feel they are endangered, in justice to themselves they are at liberty to deny the demands of the part.”
“You grudge Ireland independence?”
He passed over my interruption. “But, of course, a vigorous national life and a noble national ideal are undeniable advantages. Then how reconcile these two things—the liberty of the nation with the safety of all nations? It is the old difficulty of reconciling anarchy with socialism, those poles with equally strong claims.” He paused and said, “Yes, there is a way out.”
“Dominion status?”
He nodded. “That will allow Ireland internal development, and that will keep her within the Empire, and there will be no breach made in the nations.”
“Do you expect that to be the end?”
“I hope so.” He switched his mind elsewhere again. “It’s in bigger things than Ireland I’m interested at bottom. It is in world questions—the class wars and that kind of thing.”
“Would you regret working against Communism, if you were ordered to?”
“Not necessarily, for one can sympathise with a thing, and yet find it unworkable, and a menace. In the van of all these movements march men with the seed of truth, who are so far ahead of time that if they leapt, and the world leapt after them, the world would fall into the ditch. It is evolution which alone will bring the masses after these people. And so these prophets must be destroyed that the world may not fall into the ditch. I do not hate what I kill. I have nothing against the body that collapses at my feet. I thrust with the sword of my mind. My victim and myself, may we not both be honest men caught in the toils of life?” 47 moved. “Here, I’m freezing. We must get inside.”