Lousy sheds they
are, plastered hoardings . . . and such a damned nuisance too! For
any one who wants to do honourable things! With their wars and
their diplomacies, their tariffs and their encroachments; all their
humbugging struggles, their bloody and monstrous struggles, that
finally work out to no end at all. . . . If you are going for the
handsome thing in life then the world has to be a united world,
Benham, as a matter of course. That was settled when the railways
and the telegraph came. Telephones, wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes
insist on it. We've got to mediatise all this stuff, all these
little crowns and boundaries and creeds, and so on, that stand in
the way. Just as Italy had to be united in spite of all the rotten
little dukes and princes and republics, just as Germany had to be
united in spite of its scores of kingdoms and duchies and liberties,
so now the world. Things as they are may be fun for lawyers and
politicians and court people and--douaniers; they may suit the loan-
mongers and the armaments shareholders, they may even be more
comfortable for the middle-aged, but what, except as an
inconvenience, does that matter to you or me?"
Prothero always pleased Benham when he swept away empires.
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