ies.

TUMULTY. You mean the secret treaties, Governor. That's been a puzzle to
many of us: what you knew about them, I mean.

EX-PRES. Tumulty, I willed not to know them. Rumour of them reached me, of
course. Had I then given them a Hearing, I might have been charged with
complicity, the silence which gave consent. Many were anxious that I
should know of them--at a time when opposition would have been very
difficult--premature, outside my province. And so--by not knowing--I was
free: and when I stated the basis of the Peace terms, I stated them (and I
was secure then in my power to do so) in terms which should in honour have
made those secret treaties no longer tenable. There was my first great
error--I acknowledge it, Tumulty: that I believed in honour.

TUMULTY (_reluctantly)._ Yes ... I see that. But it's the sort of
thing one can only see after it has happened. You must have got a pretty
deep-down insight into character, Governor, when you came to the top of
things over there, to the top people, I mean.

EX PRES. (_after a pause reflectively_). Yes. it was very
interesting, when one got accustomed to it: highly selected humanity,
representative of things--it was afraid of. There daily sat four of us--if
one counts heads only; but we were, in fact, six, or seven, or eight
characters. And the characters sprang up and choked us. Patriots,
statesmen? oh yes! but also "careerists." Men whose future depends on
the popular vote can't always be themselves--at least, it seemed not; for
we should then have ceased to be "representative," and it was as
representatives that we had come. And so one would sit and listen, and
watch--one person, and two characters. Lloyd George, when his imagination
was not swamped in self-satisfaction, was quite evangelical to listen to--
sometimes. But there he was representative--not of principles, nor of
those visionary sparks which he struck so easily and threw off like
matches, but of a successful election cry for "hanging the Kaiser" and
"making Germany pay." And having got his majority, he and his majority had
become one. But for that, he might--he just might ... yet who can tell?
That tied him. I was alone.

TUMULTY (_coming nobly to the rescue_). Then take this from me,
Governor: for a man all alone you did wonders.

EX-PRES. I did my best; but I failed. My first mistake was when I believed
in honour; my second, when I let them shut the doors. Yes, to that he got
me to agree. Clever,