beginnings
of your pile out of one big war and you've been playing up a lot of
little republics against each other ever since, harvesting a neat
little fortune every time. Now it's a real world-war you're after. If it
comes, you're made, if it don't, you're broke. It's a cinch. Mind you,
I'm not throwing stones. Only I don't want you to think you can pull the
noble patriotic guff on me.

GROSVENOR

I have certain investments, of course, which might possibly be promoted
by a war. But I am not thinking of that. I am thinking of the honor of
my country, that honor which has never yet been stained, and shall not
be stained if I can do aught by my own efforts and by my prayers to God,
to keep it pure.

CONROY

[_Rising._

You carry it off well. I couldn't bluff the way you can. I haven't your
religious feeling. I know why I want war. It's because I'm a
manufacturer of guns. Everybody knows my business, and they know that if
there wasn't war or a fear of war constantly, I and my wife and children
would starve. War is my work and it's been my work most of my life. And
I've worked for this war because it was the biggest thing in sight. I've
worked for it with all the brains I've got, just as I'd have worked for
two-hundred-egg hens if I'd been a chicken farmer. I'm not a
sentimentalist. Besides, war's a good thing occasionally. I believe that
absolutely. It quiets down your socialists, cuts down your superfluous
population, increases the moral stamina of the nation. A lot of this
talk of war being hell is mush. A few people get shot up, but no one
forced 'em to go. It's their own funeral.

GROSVENOR

No, Conroy, no. I don't agree with you. I may possibly not lose
financially by this war, but nevertheless, war is terrible, awful. The
Christian sense balks at it. Only, I feel this way, sometimes when the
honor of the nation demands--

CONROY

You damn bluff!

GROSVENOR

[_Confronting him._

Conroy! If you please!

[POLLEN, _a tall, thin man in the late forties, enters left.
He has an impassive, intellectual face, interesting though
unsympathetic. His manner is calm and quietly alert, suggestive of
reserve power._

POLLEN

[_Without cordiality._

Hello, Conroy. Hello, Mr. Grosvenor.

GROSVENOR

[_Obsequious at once._

Mr. Pollen!

CONROY

I was just going to send a note round to you, Pollen. Couldn't get you
on the phone. What d'ye think? Yes or no?

POLLEN

[_With a faint,