"And the great way to inspire brotherly love all round is to keep on getting richer and richer till you have so much money that every one loves you. Money, gentlemen, is a glorious thing."
At this point, Mr. Norman Angell, who had remained silent hitherto, raised his head from his chest and murmured drowsily:
"Money, money, there isn't anything but money. Money is the only thing there is. Money and property, property and money. If you destroy it, it is gone; if you smash it, it isn't there. All the rest is a great illus—"
And with this he dozed off again into silence.
"Our poor Angell is asleep again," said The Lady Pacifist.
Mr. Bryan shook his head.
"He's been that way ever since the war began—sleeps all the time, and keeps muttering that there isn't any war, that people only imagine it, in fact that it is all an illusion. But I fear we are interrupting you," he added, turning to The Philanthropist.
"I was just saying," continued that gentleman, "that you can do anything with money. You can stop a war with it if you have enough of it, in ten minutes. I don't care what kind of war it is, or what the people are fighting for, whether they are fighting for conquest or fighting for their homes and their children. I can stop it, stop it absolutely by my grip on money, without firing a shot or incurring the slightest personal danger."
The Philanthropist spoke with the greatest emphasis, reaching out his hand and clutching his fingers in the air.
"Yes, gentlemen," he went on, "I am speaking here not of theories but of facts. This is what I am doing and what I mean to do. You've no idea how amenable people are, especially poor people, struggling people, those with ties and responsibilities, to the grip of money. I went the other day to a man I know, the head of a bank, where I keep a little money—just a fraction of what I make, gentlemen, a mere nothing to me but everything to this man because he is still not rich and is only fighting his way up. 'Now,' I said to him, 'you are English, are you not?' 'Yes, sir,' he answered. 'And I understand you mean to help along the loan to England with all the power of your bank.' 'Yes,' he said, 'I mean it and I'll do it.' 'Then I'll tell you what,' I said, 'you lend one penny, or help to lend one penny, to the people of England or the people of France, and I'll break you, I'll grind you into poverty—you and your wife and children and all that belongs to you.'"