FRANKLYN.  How can you talk such rubbish over the graves of your conscientious objectors?  All law limits liberty of conscience:  if a man’s conscience allows him to steal your watch or to shirk military service, how much liberty do you allow it?  Liberty of conscience is not my point.

BURGE [testily] I wish you would come to your point.  Half the time you are saying that you must have principles; and when I offer you principles you say they wont work.

FRANKLYN.  You have not offered me any principles.  Your party shibboleths are not principles.  If you get into power again you will find yourself at the head of a rabble of Socialists and anti-Socialists, of Jingo Imperialists and Little Englanders, of cast-iron Materialists and ecstatic Quakers, of Christian Scientists and Compulsory Inoculationists, of Syndicalists and Bureaucrats:  in short, of men differing fiercely and irreconcilably on every principle that goes to the root of human society and destiny; and the impossibility of keeping such a team together will force you to sell the pass again to the solid Conservative Opposition.

BURGE [rising in wrath] Sell the pass again!  You accuse me of having sold the pass!

FRANKLYN.  When the terrible impact of real warfare swept your parliamentary sham warfare into the dustbin, you had to go behind the backs of your followers and make a secret agreement with the leaders of the Opposition to keep you in power on condition that you dropped all legislation of which they did not approve.  And you could not even hold them to their bargain; for they presently betrayed the secret and forced the coalition on you.

BURGE.  I solemnly declare that this is a false and monstrous accusation.

FRANKLYN.  Do you deny that the thing occurred?  Were the uncontradicted reports false?  Were the published letters forgeries?

BURGE.  Certainly not.  But I did not do it.  I was not Prime Minister then.  It was that old dotard, that played-out old humbug Lubin.  He was Prime Minister then, not I.

FRANKLYN.  Do you mean to say you did not know?

BURGE [sitting down again with a shrug] Oh, I had to be told.  But what could I do?  If we had refused we might have had to go out of office.

FRANKLYN.  Precisely.

BURGE.  Well, could we desert the country at such a crisis?  The Hun was at the gate.  Everyone has to make sacrifices for the sake of the country at such moments.  We had to rise above party; and I am proud to say we never gave party a second thought.  We stuck to—­

CONRAD.  Office?

SURGE [turning on him] Yes, sir, to office:  that is, to responsibility, to danger, to heart-sickening toil, to abuse and misunderstanding, to a martyrdom that made us envy the very soldiers in the trenches.  If you had had to live for months on aspirin and bromide of potassium to get a wink of sleep, you wouldn’t talk about office as if it were a catch.