This was quite an easy one for Mr. Strong. Many times in the past, when pressed thus by his proprietor's wife for small, but exact, details, he had wished that he had known even as much about them as seemed to be known by that smart young man who had once come to The Witan in a morning coat and had told Edgar Strong that he didn't know what he was talking about. But he had long since found a way out of these trifling difficulties. Lift the issue high enough, and it is true of most things that one man's opinion is as good as another's; and they lifted issues quite toweringly high on the "Novum." Therefore in self-defence Mr. Strong flapped (so to speak) his wings, gave a struggle, cleared the earth, and was away in the empyrean of the New Imperialism. "The 'Times' always wrong. Yes. We've got to stick firmly to that," he said. "But don't you see, that very fact makes it in its way quite a useful guide. It's the next best thing to being always right, like us; we can depend on its being wrong. We've only got to contradict it, and then ask ourselves why we do so. There's usually a reason.... So there is in this--er--crisis. Of course you know their argument--that a lot of these young native doctors and lawyers come over here, and stop long enough to pick up the latest wrinkles in swindling--the civilized improvements so to speak--and then go back and start these wildcat schemes, Banks and so on, and there's a smash. I think that's a fair statement of their case.--But what's ours? Why, simply that what they're really doing is to give the Home Government a perfectly beautiful opportunity of living up to its own humane professions.... But we know what that means," he added sadly. "You mean that it just shows," said Amory eagerly, "that we aren't humane at all really? In fact, that England's a humbug?" Mr. Strong smiled. He too, in a sense, was paying out in pennies, and so far quite satisfactorily. "Well ... take this very crisis," he returned. "Oughtn't there to be a grant, without a moment's loss of time, from the Imperial Exchequer? I'm speaking from quite the lowest point of view--the mere point of view of expediency if you like. Very well. Suppose one or two natives _are_ scoundrels: what about it? Are matters any better because we know that? Don't the poverty and distress exist just the same? And isn't that precisely our opportunity, if only we had a statesman capable of seeing it?... Look here: We've only got to go to them and say, 'We are full of pity and help; here are a lot of--er--lakhs; lakhs of rupees; rupee one and twopence: you may have been foolish, but it isn't for us to cast the first stone; it's the conditions that are wrong; go and get something to eat, and don't forget your real friends by and by.'--Isn't that just the way to bind them to us? By their gratitude, eh? Isn't getting their gratitude better than blowing them from the muzzles of guns, eh? And isn't that the real Empire, of which we all dream? Eh?..."