mile_). Executive authority
has taught me that obeying orders is much simpler than giving them: you
know when you've got them done. (_Removing the cover, he drains the cup
and sets it down again_.) There! now let your conscience be at rest.
(_After a pause he resumes_:) Tumulty, when I faced failure, when I
knew that I had failed----Yes; don't trouble to contradict me. I know,
dear friend, I know that you don't agree; and, God bless you! I also know
why.----When I knew _that_, after the whole thing was over, and I was
out again and free, do you suppose I wasn't tempted to go out and cry the
truth (as some were expecting and wishing for it to be cried) in the ears
of the whole world?--let all know that I _had_ failed, and so--that
way at least--separate myself from the Evil Thing which there sat smiling
at itself in its Hall of Mirrors--seeing no frustrate ghosts, no death's
heads at that feast, as I saw them?... I came out a haunted man--all the
more because those I was amongst didn't believe in ghosts--not then.
People who have been overwhelmingly victorious in a great war find that
difficult. But they will--some day.

TUMULTY. Well, Governor, and supposing you had yielded to this
"Temptation," as you call it, what's the proposition?

EX-PRES. This ... I had one power--one weapon, still left to me
unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to be
stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very cause you
are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way--if it be of God--
to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole truth told, isn't
better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the hope that something
may yet come of it. You may get a truer judgment that way in the end;
though at the time it may seem otherwise. Yes, I _was_ tempted to cry
it aloud--to make a clean breast of it--to say, "We, the Governments of
the People, the Democracies, the Free Nations of the world, have failed--
have lost the peace which we could have won, because we would not give up
the things which we loved so much better--profit, revenge, our own too
good opinion of ourselves, our own self-righteous judgment of others."...
I was tempted to it; and yet it has been charged against me that I would
not admit failure because I wanted to save my face.

TUMULTY. You have never been much scared by what people _said_,
Governor. That d