eir country to save themselves. I salute
them as if they were going to die on the battlefield."

After a pause he continued: "And it will be a battlefield, too, and
not a metaphorical one. We have yielded to foreign financiers so
long that now it is war or ruin, Even the people, even the country
people, are beginning to suspect that they are being ruined. That is
the meaning of the regrettable incidents in the newspapers."

"The meaning of the outrages on Orientals?" asked March.

"The meaning of the outrages on Orientals," replied Fisher, "is that
the financiers have introduced Chinese labor into this country with
the deliberate intention of reducing workmen and peasants to
starvation. Our unhappy politicians have made concession after
concession; and now they are asking concessions which amount to our
ordering a massacre of our own poor. If we do not fight now we shall
never fight again. They will have put England in an economic
position of starving in a week. But we are going to fight now; I
shouldn't wonder if there were an ultimatum in a week and an
invasion in a fortnight. All the past corruption and cowardice is
hampering us, of course; the West country is pretty stormy and
doubtful even in a military sense; and the Irish regiments there,
that are supposed to support us by the new treaty, are pretty well
in mutiny; for, of course, this infernal coolie capitalism is being
pushed in Ireland, too. But it's to stop now; and if the government
message of reassurance gets through to them in time, they may turn
up after all by the time the enemy lands. For my poor old gang is
going to stand to its guns at last. Of course it's only natural that
when they have been whitewashed for half a century as paragons,
their sins should come back on them at the very moment when they are
behaving like men for the first time in their lives. Well, I tell
you, March, I know them inside out; and I know they are behaving
like heroes. Every man of them ought to have a statue, and on the
pedestal words like those of the noblest ruffian of the Revolution:
'Que mon nom soit fletri; que la France soit libre.'"

"Good God!" cried March, "shall we never get to the bottom of your
mines and countermines?"

After a silence Fisher answered in a lower voice, looking his friend
in the eyes.

"Did you think there was nothing but evil at the bottom of them?" he
asked, gently. "Did you think I had found nothing but filth in the
deep seas into whi