“It’s a noble ideal,” he said. “La Patrie! The great Mother. Right or wrong, who shall dare to harm her? Yes, if it was she who rose up in her majesty and called to us.” He laughed. “What does it mean in reality: Germania, Italia, La France, Britannia? Half a score of pompous old muddlers with their fat wives egging them on: sons of the fools before them; talkers who have wormed themselves into power by making frothy speeches and fine promises. My Country!” he laughed again. “Look at them. Can’t you see their swelling paunches and their flabby faces? Half a score of ambitious politicians, gouty old financiers, bald-headed old toffs, with their waxed moustaches and false teeth. That’s what we mean when we talk about ‘My Country’: a pack of selfish, soulless, muddle-headed old men. And whether they’re right or whether they’re wrong, our duty is to fight at their bidding—to bleed for them, to die for them, that they may grow more sleek and prosperous.” He sank back on his pillow with another laugh. “Perhaps you are right,” she admitted. “Perhaps that is why He made us male and female: to teach us to love.”!

A little choking sound was the only answer. But the woman rose and, Joan following, they stole upstairs into the bedroom and Mrs. Phillips turned the key. Flossie was sceptical. “Why hasn’t it done it before?” she wanted to know. “Good Lord! There’s been enough of it.”

She would stand behind Phillips’s chair with her fat arms round his neck, nodding her approval and encouragement; while Joan, seated opposite, would strain every nerve to keep her brain fixed upon the argument, never daring to look at poor Phillips’s wretched face, with its pleading, apologetic eyes, lest she should burst into hysterical laughter. She hoped she was being helpful and inspiring! Mrs. Phillips would assure her afterwards that she had been wonderful. As for herself, there were periods when she hadn’t the faintest idea about what she was talking. He did not answer; and they sat for a time in silence. “We won’t despair of her,” laughed Joan. “She’s creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her. We have passed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes. Now we dare to criticize her. That shows we are growing up. She will learn from us, later on. She’s a dear old thing, at heart.”