nk that I can make the strike a success by standing
aside and holding my hands. That, of course, is pure nonsense. If the
men want to stop work, nobody has a right to interfere with them.
Certainly I haven't. But have they the right--the question hangs on this
point--to interfere with the farmers who want to get their crops to
market as badly as the strikers want to quit work? The kind of general
strike these people have in mind bears less relation to industry than it
does to war; and you know what I think about war and the rights of
non-combatants. They want to tie up the whole system of transportation
until they starve their opponents into submission. The old damnable
Prussian theory again, you see, that crops up wherever men take the
stand, which they do everywhere they have the power, that might is a law
unto itself. Now, I am with these men exactly half way, and no further.
As long as their method of striking doesn't interfere with the rights of
the public, they seem to me fair enough. But when it comes to raising
the price of food still higher and cutting off the city milk
supply--well, when they talk of that, then I begin to think of the human
side of it." He broke off abruptly, and concluded in a less serious
tone, "that's the only thing in the whole business I care about--the
human side of it all--"

A phrase of Benham's floated suddenly into her mind, and she found
herself repeating it aloud: "There are no human rights where a principle
is involved."

Vetch laughed. "That's not you; it's Benham. I recognize it. He's the
sort that would believe that, I suppose--the sort that would write a
political document in blood if he didn't have ink."

"Oh, don't!" she protested. There was a grain of truth in the epigram,
but she resented it the more keenly for this.

"Well, I may have intended it as a compliment," rejoined Vetch gaily.
"He would take it that way, I reckon. And, anyhow, you have heard him
make worse flings at me."

She coloured, admitting and denying at the same time, the truth of his
words. "You could never understand each other. You are so different."

He looked at her gravely; but even gravity could not wholly drive the
gleam of humour from his eyes. "At any rate I admire Benham. I have the
advantage of him there." The quickness of his wit made her smile. "But,
as you say, we are different," he added after a moment. "I reckon I've
turned my hand at times to jobs of which Benham would disapprove; b