JESSE COLLINGS. What mistake?
CHAMBERLAIN. Collings, the Boer War wasn't good business. It might have been; but it lasted too long. Any modern war that isn't over in six months now is a blunder, you'll find. They were able to hold out too long. That did for me. There have been bees in my bonnet ever since—all because of it. Boers first; then Bannerman; then—Balfour. Just once my business instinct betrayed me, and I was done!
JESSE COLLINGS. But—wasn't the war necessary?
CHAMBERLAIN. To put the "business" on a sound footing? Yes, I thought so; it looked like it. No, it wasn't! But before I quite knew, there'd come a point where we couldn't go back; and so we just had to go on—and on. D'you know what was the cleverest thing said or done during that war?… You'd never guess … but it's true. Campbell-Bannerman's "methods of barbarism" speech. We downed him for it at the time, but it caught on—it stuck. And it was on the strength of it (with C.-B. as their hope for the future) that the Boers were persuaded to make peace: saved our face for us. They might have gone on, till we got sick of it, and the world too.
JESSE COLLINGS. I don't—I can't think you are right, Chamberlain. You are forgetting things.
CHAMBERLAIN. No—I've had difficulty about thinking so myself; but, it has come to me.
(And so he sits and meditates over the point in his career where as a business man he first jailed. Presently he resumes:)
When two men, whose qualifications I used rather to despise, beat me at business, Collings—it was a facer!
JESSE COLLINGS. Bannerman; and—the other?
CHAMBERLAIN. Comes to see me to-day. But it won't be a business meeting.
He'll not say anything about it—if he can help.