‘Is he?’ said Tosher Johnson, the Canadian.
We all looked up with a start. Tosher was a dark horse.
‘Yes,’ Ginger retorted with emphasis.
‘Well, I guess Nobby’s Free Trade is all bosh, but he’s a man of push and go. You’re too durned slow for a funeral over here. Your hoofs are sticking in the feudal mud. An earthquake’s the only thing to stop your browsing on Homer and chewing the rag about “form.” This is the Dollar Age. Make good or go under. You wowsers from Oxford and Cambridge want your blinkers taken off. The classics cut no ice in this age. Homer, Socrates, and Plato won’t sever the ham-strings of the Hun. When you were pottering around on Shakespeare, Tennyson, golf, tennis, and “Rugger,” the Hun was dumping his goods in Canada and every bush town in the Empire. It makes me sick to hear all this gaw-damned talk in your papers. You’re a fine people, but you only crawl. You won’t run. If you don’t get a spark under your old machinery, this old scheme will peter out like Spain and Rome.’
‘Rotten materialism,’ shouted Ginger. ‘Your philosophy is “guessing,” your soul is “calculating,” and you’re clean gone on “results.” You’ve been taught no history. Old things you don’t know or understand. And when you land in the Old Country, you want to bring your commercial morality into the only decent Government in the world. You’re all jolly good fellows. Fine soldiers! Good citizens! But you’re dollar-mad, and have no bottom in your politics or finance. Smuts is a Colonial, but he doesn’t talk like you.’
‘He was at Cambridge. Good old Cambridge!’ shouted Beefy.
‘Yes,’ answered Ginger. ‘Smuts is about the only man you’ve produced at Cambridge. He refused to play the giddy goat, and put his nose down on the classics, logic, history, and law. That’s what you want, Johnson.’
‘Not for me, old chicken. Homer never built the C.P.R., Shakespeare ain’t a bit of use on a Calgary beef-ranch, and Darwin’s theory won’t milk a Holstein or a Jersey. A clear head, a strong back, and a good riding-leg cut ice in these times. Business is business. And dollars keep up men and munitions. You ain’t wise, Ginger.’
‘Well, boys,’ said I, butting in, ‘we’ve discussed everything from bishops to Free Trade and the classics, but we are getting muddled and fogged. This fellow Ginger from Oxford is paralysing our repartee and logic, and old Tosher wants to make the Old Land into a dollar-factory. It seems to me that the main issue raised by this howling Radical, Nobby Clarke, is whether we shall vote for Bolsheviks or Imperialists. I don’t quite agree with high-browed Ginger, nor do I support all the materialism of Tosher. But the future is clearly a titanic contest between Republicanism and Imperialism. I move we put it to the vote.’