st is the truth. There is a further confession, however, which
under the circumstances I have to make. I belong to a body of men who
are in touch with a similar association in Germany, but I have no share
in any of the practical doings--the machinery, I might call it--of our
organisation. I have known that communications have passed back and
forth, but I imagined that this was done through neutral countries. I
went out the night before last as an ordinary British citizen, to do my
duty. I had not the faintest idea that there was to be any attempt
to land a communication here, referring to the matters in which I am
interested. I should imagine that the proof, of my words lies in the
fact that efforts were made to prevent my reaching my beat, and that
you, my substitute, whom I deliberately sent to take my place, were
attacked."

"I accept your word so far," Julian said. "Please go on."

"I am an Englishman and a patriot," Furley continued, "just as much as
you are, although you are a son of the Earl of Maltenby, and you
fought in the war. You must listen to me without prejudice. There are
thoughtful men in England, patriots to the backbone, trying to grope
their way to the truth about this bloody sacrifice. There are thoughtful
men in Germany on the same tack. If, for the betterment of the world, we
should seek to come into touch with one another, I do not consider that
treason, or communicating with an enemy country in the ordinary sense of
the word."

"I see," Julian muttered. "What you are prepared to plead guilty to is
holding communication with members of the Labour and Socialist Party in
Germany."

"I plead guilty to nothing," Furley answered, with a touch of his old
fierceness. "Don't talk like your father and his class, Julian. Get away
from it. Be yourself. Your Ministers can't end the war. Your Government
can't. They opened their mouth too wide at first. They made too many
commitments. Ask Stenson. He'll tell you that I'm speaking the truth.
So it goes on, and day by day it costs the world a few hundred or a few
thousand human lives, and God knows how much of man's labour and brains,
annihilated, wasted, blown into the air! Somehow or other the war has
got to stop, Julian. If the politicians won't do it, the people must."

"The people," Julian repeated a little sadly. "Rienzi once trusted in
the people."

"There's a difference," Furley protested. "Today the people are all
right, but the Rienzi isn't here