"No--just like Jingalo; that is what makes it strong. If I were foolish, if I were only going there to make money, I should try to get some treaty, some concession, some sort of trade-monopoly--rubber, or gum, or niggers' blood, it is all the same thing--I should try to get that from the Brazils or the Bolivias or whoever thinks that it is theirs to sell. I am not such a fool: I do not want to trade, if I have got the people. They are strong, they can run, they live clean lives--nobody has spoiled them; they do not want to be rich; they are still a wonderful people; they know a leader when they have found him. And when they gave me these dragons that I have on me, then I became their King. That is my secret. Now!" "But if I were to tell people _that_----" "Pooh! They would not believe you. 'Mad,' that is what they would say. 'Don't marry that man, he is mad!' And besides I am not King as we talk of kings here in Europe; they would not pay taxes to me or anybody, but I can show them what to do. That country on the map may 'belong' to anybody--the United States may write 'Monroe'--one of their big 'bow-wows' that was--they may write 'Monroe' all round the coasts of South America and at every port that they like to stick in their noses; but they cannot get there to say that the people living on that land shall not become great and strong in their own way, without any one else to say about it. To those men outside I shall only look like a trader what is too stupid to trade with them; but all my trade will be among my own people. That country can live on itself; there, that is my secret! It wants nothing, nothing from outside at all; and the people want nothing either. They have great high plateaux where they can live cool; and they have all the brains and the blood that they want to make themselves a great nation. I have drilled them; ah, but not German fashion, no! They are much too splendid for that. Every man is an army to himself. They do not fear, for in their religion it is forbidden them. But if you can think of Bersaglieri--which are the best troops in Europe--able to climb like monkeys, to swim like fish, to go along the ground like snakes, and to get all by different ways to the same place in the dark with their eyes shut, though they have never been there before--for that is how it seems--well, that is what my army is going to be like. I have ten thousand of them drilled already; in a year I shall have them armed; and I tell you that at six hundred miles from the nearest coast nobody will be able to beat them." "No, perhaps not with armies," said Charlotte; "but what about civilization itself--all the evil part of it, I mean? How are you going to keep that out?"