“But—honour?—” she suggested.
“Honour? It depends on what’s called honour. A hundred years ago we were fighting the French at Waterloo—now we want to defend them. Why? We didn’t help them in the Franco-German war. We let them fight it out. So we should now. Twaddle, I tell you!—all twaddle!”
She smiled and sighed.
“Well, it seems to me very serious news,” she said. “It has quite spoilt the day for me.”
“Why should it spoil the day?” he demanded. “What have you got to do with it? Here you are in a nice garden,—lovely weather—and I believe you’ve got a new hat on. What else can any woman want?”
She gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders, which implied that he was not worth the trouble of answering. He continued, pleased with his own remarks:
“Women know nothing about war or politics,” he said. “They are not expected to know. They have their homes and their home duties—”
“And their men,” she interposed. “Their husbands and brothers and lovers,—in war these have to go and fight—”
“Of course they have,” agreed the Philosopher. “Most of them are only fit for cannon-fodder.”
She flushed angrily.