Under One Flag

by Richard Marsh

"One cannot but feel that some of your ideas are a little morbid."

"My ideas!"

To my surprise, and also to my indignation, a chorus of voices rose from round the table, all, actually, condemning me.

"Certainly!"

"Beyond all reason!"

"Show a disordered imagination!"

"Monstrous that we should have to submit to them!"

"If we'd had the faintest notion of what you proposed to do we should none of us ever have come."

"Gentlemen," I shouted, "I protest that my ideas have not been carried out."

"Not in their entirety," the man Finlayson had the audacity to retort. "The notion that corpses should be scattered about the room, and that we should sit in coffins, and wear graveclothes, was a little--it really was a little, don't you think?"