“Personally, I'd rather send the money and get some sleep.”
“Precisely. But would you send the money? We've got to have a quid pro quo, you know-most of us.” He surveyed the crowd with cynical, dissatisfied eyes. “At the end of two years of the war,” he observed, apropos of nothing, “five million men are dead, and eleven million have been wounded. A lot of them were doing this sort of thing two years ago.”
“I would like to know where we will be two years from now.”
“Some of us won't be here. Have you seen Lloyd George's speech on the German peace terms? That means going on to the end. A speedy peace might have left us out, but there will be no peace. Not yet, or soon.”
“And still we don't prepare!”
“The English tradition persists,” said the Irishman, bitterly. “We want to wait, and play to the last moment, and then upset our business and overthrow the whole country, trying to get ready in a hurry.
“I wonder what they will do, when the time comes, with men like you and myself?”
“Take our money,” said Nolan viciously. “Tax our heads off. Thank God I haven't a son.”
Clayton eyed him with the comprehension of long acquaintance.
“Exactly,” he said. “But you'll go yourself, if you can.”