"My dear fellow, would you consider it a dishonourable act to appropriate a pin from your neighbour's dressing-table?"
"Well, no. There is no value in a pin."
"Yes, there is. All values are relative. To the company concerned the amount involved is scarcely more than the value of a pin to your landlady."
"If I took a penny from her dressing-table it would be theft."
"You think that because the disc of copper represents a fixed amount of money. Call it theft if you like. So then taking a pin would be theft."
"Perhaps so."
"But a theft so small that in any moral or legal reckoning it would not count. It would not count because your landlady would not feel it. So the paltry amount under discussion would not be felt by the company."
"You call it a paltry amount, and yet it represents the value of a life."
"My dear fellow, human life is not of much account in this world. Governments—especially Christian Governments—sacrifice men by thousands for bits of barren territory that are not worth sixpence."
"The Creator, perhaps, sets more value on them."