_
Your Majesty is an idealist. We are practical, and, I may say,
far-seeing men. And we are the three men, perhaps, who have given your
Majesty the chair you sit on and made your kingdom what it is.
KING
[_Drawing himself up._
I think I have not been ungrateful. But my people come first, and I will
not have my people plunged into misery for no valid and inevitable
necessity.
PRIME MINISTER
Your Majesty, I have served you for fifteen years and I served your
exalted father for twenty. You are right. This war may be avoided. In
two days this war-cloud could be so utterly dissipated that men would
laugh here and in the great Republic that for a day they had talked so
hotly of war. Dissipated. For a year, for two years. For always? No. The
war must come sooner or later. It is a matter, in the first place, of
prestige, of national honor. But, more emphatically, it is a question of
mathematics, birth-rate, death-rate, revenue, taxes, industries,
imports, exports.
[_Crossing to left._
There is a map of the world, your Majesty. This stretch of land there we
need as a safety-valve.
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