BURGE [turning on him] Not a bit of it.  I want to cultivate my garden.  I am not interested in politics:  I am interested in roses.  I havnt a scrap of ambition.  I went into politics because my wife shoved me into them, bless her!  But I want to serve my country.  What else am I for?  I want to save my country from the Tories.  They dont represent the people.  The man they have made Prime Minister has never represented the people; and you know it.  Lord Dunreen is the bitterest old Tory left alive.  What has he to offer to the people?

FRANKLYN [cutting in before Burge can proceed—­as he evidently intends—­to answer his own question] I will tell you.  He has ascertainable beliefs and principles to offer.  The people know where they are with Lord Dunreen.  They know what he thinks right and what he thinks wrong.  With your followers they never know where they are.  With you they never know where they are.

BURGE [amazed] With me!

FRANKLYN.  Well, where are you?  What are you?

BURGE.  Barnabas:  you must be mad.  You ask me what I am?

FRANKLYN.  I do.

BURGE.  I am, if I mistake not, Joyce Burge, pretty well known throughout Europe, and indeed throughout the world, as the man who—­unworthily perhaps, but not quite unsuccessfully—­held the helm when the ship of State weathered the mightiest hurricane that has ever burst with earth-shaking violence on the land of our fathers.

FRANKLYN.  I know that.  I know who you are.  And the earth-shaking part of it to me is that though you were placed in that enormously responsible position, neither I nor anyone else knows what your beliefs are, or even whether you have either beliefs or principles.  What we did know was that your Government was formed largely of men who regarded you as a robber of henroosts, and whom you regarded as enemies of the people.

BURGE [adroitly, as he thinks] I agree with you.  I agree with you absolutely.  I dont believe in coalition governments.

FRANKLYN.  Precisely.  Yet you formed two.

BURGE.  Why?  Because we were at war.  That is what you fellows never would realize.  The Hun was at the gate.  Our country, our lives, the honor of our wives and mothers and daughters, the tender flesh of our innocent babes, were at stake.  Was that a time to argue about principles?

FRANKLYN.  I should say it was the time of all others to confirm the resolution of our own men and gain the confidence and support of public opinion throughout the world by a declaration of principle.  Do you think the Hun would ever have come to the gate if he had known that it would be shut in his face on principle?  Did he not hold his own against you until America boldly affirmed the democratic principle and came to our rescue?  Why did you let America snatch that honor from England?

BURGE.  Barnabas:  America was carried away by words, and had to eat them at the Peace Conference.  Beware of eloquence:  it is the bane of popular speakers like you.