BURGE. Oh, if you count foreigners--!
HAS LAM. God counts foreigners, you know.
SAVVY [_with intense satisfaction_] Well said, Bill.
FRANKLYN. I am not blaming you. Your task was beyond human capacity.
What with our huge armaments, our terrible engines of destruction, our
systems of coercion manned by an irresistible police, you were called on
to control powers so gigantic that one shudders at the thought of their
being entrusted even to an infinitely experienced and benevolent God,
much less to mortal men whose whole life does not last a hundred years.
BURGE. We won the war: don't forget that.
FRANKLYN. No: the soldiers and sailors won it, and left you to finish
it. And you were so utterly incompetent that the multitudes of children
slain by hunger in the first years of peace made us all wish we were at
war again.
CONRAD. It's no use arguing about it. It is now absolutely certain that
the political and social problems raised by our civilization cannot be
solved by mere human mushrooms who decay and die when they are just
beginning to have a glimmer of the wisdom and knowledge needed for their
own government.
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