"Whom are you going to do it with?" the Major asked dryly. "Why do you think one set of men will be better than another? It's all right for you to try, but you will never succeed. Just when your impetus is at its best, rapacious leaders will appear and steal all that you have given your lives to gain."
"There is no animal so easily deceived as man," he went on. "Stupidity," and he looked hard at Applebaum, "is the most noticeable of human traits. You can trap a man with a piece of tainted meat that a wolf would despise. Give him a symbol, it matters not what—a delphic oracle, a church, an empire—and he will rally to the call of greed and fight its battles manfully. With the cry of victory on their lips I could, and have led native troops to destroy their own homes."
"Oh, Major dear!" Kathleen cried incredulously.
"Of course they didn't know what they were doing," the old man said. A smile lit up his face and in a moment he looked so handsome and venerable that two of his listeners, at least, forgot his rudeness. "Most men do not see the end of the road. My father was a soldier and sincerely religious. He thought when fighting in the service that he was bringing Christ to the heathen; but when he got home and read of his achievements he found that he had only forced China to trade in opium."
William Applebaum could no longer keep silent. "Why will you show only the rotten side of things?" he asked, real passion in his voice. "All wars are not actuated by greed and all men are not dupes. My grandfather fought here in this country. He was a colonel and he battled to free the slave."
"Yes?" said the Major. He turned and looked at Hertha. "You're from the South?"
She nodded in affirmation.
"I heard it in your speech. Now how many colonels might there have been in your family?"
"More than I can count," Hertha made answer, smiling. But the smile was not for him but for her own cleverness.
"You hear?" the Major turned to Applebaum. "And those young colonels fought with the same ardor, the same unselfish courage as your ancestor, though he battled for freedom and they gave their lives that men might go on buying black people as they bought horses and sheep."