s.
You've all been bricks to me. My heart's in my work, Banning; I'm
not eager to undergo political eclipse at forty.

SHELDER. Just so--we don't want to see you in that quandary.

BANNING. It'd be no friendliness to give you a wrong impression of
the state of feeling. Silence--till the bitterness is overpast;
there's naught else for it, Mr. More, while you feel as you do. That
tongue of yours! Come! You owe us something. You're a big man;
it's the big view you ought to take.

MORE. I am trying to.

HOME. And what precisely is your view--you'll pardon my asking?

MORE. [Turning on him] Mr. Home a great country such as ours--is
trustee for the highest sentiments of mankind. Do these few outrages
justify us in stealing the freedom of this little people?

BANNING. Steal--their freedom! That's rather running before the
hounds.

MORE. Ah, Banning! now we come to it. In your hearts you're none of
you for that--neither by force nor fraud. And yet you all know that
we've gone in there to stay, as we've gone into other lands--as all
we big Powers go into other lands, when they're little and weak. The
Prime Minister's words the other night were these: "If we are forced
to spend this blood and money now, we must never again be forced."
What does that mean but swallowing this country?

SHELDER. Well, and quite frankly, it'd be no bad thing.

HOME. We don't want their wretched country--we're forced.

MORE. We are not forced.

SHELDER. My dear More, what is civilization but the logical,
inevitable swallowing up of the lower by the higher types of man?
And what else will it be here?

MORE. We shall not agree there, Shelder; and we might argue it all
day. But the point is, not whether you or I are right--the point is:
What is a man who holds a faith with all his heart to do? Please
tell me.

[There is a silence.]

BANNING. [Simply] I was just thinkin' of those poor fellows in the
Pass.

MORE. I can see them, as well as you, Banning. But, imagine! Up in
our own country--the Black Valley--twelve hundred foreign devils dead
and dying--the crows busy over them--in our own country, our own
valley--ours--ours--violated. Would you care about "the poor
fellows" in that Pass?--Invading, stealing dogs! Kill them--kill
them! You would, and I would, too!

The passion of those words touches and grips as no arguments
could; and they are silent.

MORE. Well! What's the differen