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SIR PEARCE

[warmly]. It is the quarrel of every honest man and true patriot, O’Flaherty. Your mother must see that as clearly as I do. After all, she is a reasonable, well disposed woman, quite capable of understanding the right and the wrong of the war. Why can’t you explain to her what the war is about?

O’FLAHERTY

. Arra, sir, how the divil do I know what the war is about?

SIR PEARCE

(rising again and standing over him]. What! O’Flaherty: do you know what you are saying? You sit there wearing the Victoria Cross for having killed God knows how many Germans; and you tell me you don’t know why you did it!

O’FLAHERTY

. Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such thing. I know quite well why I kilt them, because I was afeard that, if I didn’t, they’d kill me.

SIR PEARCE

(giving it up, and sitting down again]. Yes, yes, of course; but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of the interests at stake? of the importance–I may almost say–in fact I will say–the sacred right for which we are fighting? Don’t you read the papers?

O’FLAHERTY

. I do when I can get them. There’s not many newsboys crying the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir Pearce, that we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio Bottomley Lord Leftnant of England. Do you think that’s true, sir?

SIR PEARCE

. Rubbish, man! there’s no Lord Lieutenant in England: the king is Lord Lieutenant. It’s a simple question of patriotism. Does patriotism mean nothing to you?

O’FLAHERTY

. It means different to me than what it would to you, sir. It means England and England’s king to you. To me and the like of me, it means talking about the English just the way the English papers talk about the Boshes. And what good has it ever done here in Ireland? It’s kept me ignorant because it filled up my mother’s mind, and she thought it ought to fill up mine too. It’s kept Ireland poor, because instead of trying to better ourselves we thought we was the fine fellows of patriots when we were speaking evil of Englishmen that was as poor as ourselves and maybe as good as ourselves. The Boshes I kilt was more knowledgable men than me; and what better am I now that I’ve kilt them? What better is anybody?

SIR PEARCE

[huffed, turning a cold shoulder to him]. I am sorry the terrible experience of this war–the greatest war ever fought –has taught you no better, O’Flaherty.

O’FLAHERTY

[preserving his dignity]. I don’t know about it’s being a great war, sir. It’s a big war; but that’s not the same thing. Father Quinlan’s new church is a big church: you might take the little old chapel out of the middle of it and not miss it. But my mother says there was more true religion in the old chapel. And the war has taught me that maybe she was right.

SIR PEARCE

[grunts sulkily]!!

O’FLAHERTY

[respectfully but doggedly]. And there’s another thing it’s taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make bold to tell it to you.

SIR PEARCE

[still sulky]. I hope it’s nothing you oughtn’t to say to me, O’Flaherty.

O’FLAHERTY

. It’s this, sir: that I’m able to sit here now and talk to you without humbugging you; and that’s what not one of your tenants or your tenants’ childer ever did to you before in all your long life. It’s a true respect I’m showing you at last, sir. Maybe you’d rather have me humbug you and tell you lies as I used, just as the boys here, God help them, would rather have me tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all the world knows I never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But I can’t take advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be wanting in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.