following week; and Teal, who would have no strong views on the subject until his daily newspaper told him what he ought to think, found that his role of obscure listener gave him an excellent chance to study the characters of the others who took part.
'I shouldn't be surprised if that bill if mine had something to do with these letters I've been getting,' said Yearleigh.'Those damned Communists are capable of anything. If they only took some exercise and got some fresh air they'd work all that nonsense out of their systems. Young Maurice is a bit that way himself,' he added slyly.
Maurice Vould flushed slightly. He was about thirty-five, thin and spectacled and somewhat untidy, with a curiously transparent ivory skin that was the exact antithesis of Yearleigh's weather-beaten complexion. He was, Teal had already ascertained, a cousin of Lady Yearleigh's; he had a private income of about ?800 a year, and devoted his time to writing poems and essays which a very limited public acclaimed as being of unusual worth.
'I admit that I believe in the divine right of mankind to earn a decent wage, to have enough food to eat and a decent house to live in, and to be free to live his life without interference,' he said in a rather pleasant quiet voice. 'If that is, Communism, I suppose I'm a Communist.'
'But presumably you wouldn't include armed attack by a foreign power under your heading of interference,' said a man on the opposite side of the table.
He was a sleek well-nourished man with heavy sallow cheeks and a small diamond set in the ring on his third finger; and Teal knew that he was Sir Bruno Walmar, the chairman and presiding genius of the Walmar Oil Corporation and all its hundred subsidiaries. His voice was as harsh as his appearance was smooth, with an aggressive domineering quality to it which did not so much offer argument as defy it; but the voice did not silence Vould.
'That isn't the only concern of Yearleigh's bill,' he said.
The Right Honourable Mark Ormer, War Minister in the reigning Government, scratched the centre of his grey moustache in the rather old-maidish gesture which the cartoonist had made familiar to everyone in England, and said: 'The National Preparedness Bill merely requires a certain amount of military training to be included in the education of every British boy, so that if his services should be needed in the defence of his country in after life, he should be qualified to play his part without delay. No other eventuality has been envisaged.'
'How can you say that no other eventuality has been envisaged?' asked Vould quietly. 'You take a boy and teach him the rudiments of killing as if they were a desirable thing to know. You give him a uniform to wear and impress upon him the fact that he is a fighting man in the making. You make him shoot blank cartridges at other boys, and treat the whole pantomime as a good joke. You create a man who will instinctively answer a call to arms whenever the call is made; and how can you sit there tonight and say that you know exactly and only in what circumstances somebody will start to shout the call ?'
'I think we can depend on the temperament of the English people to be sure of that,' said Ormer indulgently.
'I think you can also depend on the hysteria of most mobs when their professional politicians wave a flag,' answered Maurice Vould. 'There probably was a time when people fought to defend their countries, but now they have to fight to save the faces of their politicians and the bank balances of their business men.'
'Stuff and nonsense!' interjected Lord Yearleigh heartily. 'Englishmen have got too much sense. A bit of military training is good for a boy. Teaches him discipline. Besides, you can't stop people fighting—healthy people—with that watery pacifist talk. It's human nature.'
'Like killing your next-door neighbour because you want to steal his lawn mower,' said Vould gently. 'That's another primitive instinct which human nature hasn't been able to eradicate.'
Yearleigh gave a snort of impatience; and Sir Bruno Walmar rubbed his smooth hands over each other and said in his rasping voice: 'I suppose you were a conscientious objector during the last war, Mr. Vould?'
'I'm sorry to disappoint you,' said Vould, with a pale smile, 'but I was enjoying the experience of inhaling poison gas when I was sixteen years old. While you, Ormer, were making patriotic speeches, and you, Walmar, were making money. That's the difference between us. I've seen a war, and so I know what it's like; and I've also lived long enough after it to know how much good it does.'
