TUMULTY (zealous, in a pause, to show his interest). Well,
Governor, well?
EX-PRES. And then, rather than let me so go and spoil the general effect (the one power still left to me!), they began to make concessions— concessions which, I see now, didn't amount to much; and so they persuaded me, and I stayed on, and signed my failure with the rest.
TUMULTY (for a diversion pointing to the covered cup).
Pardon me, Governor, you must obey orders, you know. They are not mine.
EX-PRES. (taking up the cup with a dry smile). Executive authority has taught me that obeying orders is much simpler than giving them: you know when you've got them done. (Removing the cover, he drains the cup and sets it down again.) There! now let your conscience be at rest. (After a pause he resumes:) Tumulty, when I faced failure, when I knew that I had failed——Yes; don't trouble to contradict me. I know, dear friend, I know that you don't agree; and, God bless you! I also know why.——When I knew that, after the whole thing was over, and I was out again and free, do you suppose I wasn't tempted to go out and cry the truth (as some were expecting and wishing for it to be cried) in the ears of the whole world?—let all know that I had failed, and so—that way at least—separate myself from the Evil Thing which there sat smiling at itself in its Hall of Mirrors—seeing no frustrate ghosts, no death's heads at that feast, as I saw them?… I came out a haunted man—all the more because those I was amongst didn't believe in ghosts—not then. People who have been overwhelmingly victorious in a great war find that difficult. But they will—some day.
TUMULTY. Well, Governor, and supposing you had yielded to this
"Temptation," as you call it, what's the proposition?
EX-PRES. This … I had one power—one weapon, still left to me unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to be stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very cause you are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way—if it be of God— to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole truth told, isn't better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the hope that something may yet come of it. You may get a truer judgment that way in the end; though at the time it may seem otherwise. Yes, I was tempted to cry it aloud—to make a clean breast of it—to say, "We, the Governments of the People, the Democracies, the Free Nations of the world, have failed— have lost the peace which we could have won, because we would not give up the things which we loved so much better—profit, revenge, our own too good opinion of ourselves, our own self-righteous judgment of others."… I was tempted to it; and yet it has been charged against me that I would not admit failure because I wanted to save my face.
TUMULTY. You have never been much scared by what people said,
Governor. That didn't count, I reckon.
EX-PRES. No, Tumulty; but this did—that where all seemed dark, I still saw light. Down there, among the wreckage, something was left—an instrument of which I thought I saw the full future possibility more clearly than others. I believe I do still. And my main thought then was—how best to secure that one thing to which, half blindly, they had agreed. To win that, I was willing to give up my soul.
TUMULTY. It's the Covenant, you mean, Governor?
EX-PRES. Yes, the Covenant! That at least was won—seemed won—whatever else was lost. Some of them were willing to let me have it only because they themselves believed it would prove useless—just to save my face for all I had to give up in exchange. And so I—let them "save my face" for me; let them think that it was so—just to give this one thing its chance. And so, for that, and for that alone, I bound myself to the Treaty—stood pledged to do my utmost to see it through: a different thing, that, from telling the truth. Was I wrong, Tumulty—was I wrong?