ngs to the big
Powers. All the serious part of my life has been lived in that
atmosphere: all the serious part of my work has been done with
men of that sort. Just think of me as I am now going back to
Rosscullen! to that hell of littleness and monotony! How am I to
get on with a little country landagent that ekes out his 5 per
cent with a little farming and a scrap of house property in the
nearest country town? What am I to say to him? What is he to say
to me?

BROADBFNT [scandalized]. But you're father and son, man!

DOYLE. What difference does that make? What would you say if I
proposed a visit to YOUR father?

BROADBENT [with filial rectitude]. I always made a point of going
to see my father regularly until his mind gave way.

DOYLE [concerned]. Has he gone mad? You never told me.

BROADBENT. He has joined the Tariff Reform League. He would never
have done that if his mind had not been weakened. [Beginning to
declaim] He has fallen a victim to the arts of a political
charlatan who--

DOYLE [interrupting him]. You mean that you keep clear of your
father because he differs from you about Free Trade, and you
don't want to quarrel with him. Well, think of me and my father!
He's a Nationalist and a Separatist. I'm a metallurgical chemist
turned civil engineer. Now whatever else metallurgical chemistry
may be, it's not national. It's international. And my business
and yours as civil engineers is to join countries, not to
separate them. The one real political conviction that our
business has rubbed into us is that frontiers are hindrances and
flags confounded nuisances.

BROADBENT [still smarting under Mr Chamberlain's economic
heresy]. Only when there is a protective tariff--

DOYLE [firmly] Now look here, Tom: you want to get in a speech on
Free Trade; and you're not going to do it: I won't stand it. My
father wants to make St George's Channel a frontier and hoist a
green flag on College Green; and I want to bring Galway within 3
hours of Colchester and 24 of New York. I want Ireland to be the
brains and imagination of a big Commonwealth, not a Robinson
Crusoe island. Then there's the religious difficulty. My
Catholicism is the Catholicism of Charlemagne or Dante, qualified
by a great deal of modern science and folklore which Father
Dempsey would call the ravings of an Atheist. Well, my father's
Catholicism is the Catholicism of Father Dempsey.

BROADBENT [shrewdly]. I don't want to interrupt you, Larry; bu