"Nonsense! The thing's so simple it isn't worth repeating. We have to have more ships than anybody else because our empire is bigger than anybody else's--and more scattered. As for eating, it strikes me that Germany has done more of that lately than any one. However, if you know so much about islands, you must also know how we happened to go into India--or Egypt. In the beginning it was pure accident. And you know very well that if we left them to-morrow there would be the devil to pay. Do we get a penny out of them?" "Oh, no!" laughed Magin. "You administer them purely on altruistic principles, for their own good and that of the world at large--like the oil-wells of the Karun!" "Well, since you put it that way," laughed Matthews in turn, "perhaps we do!" Magin shrugged his shoulders. "Extraordinary people! Do you really think the rest of the world so stupid? Or it is that the fog of your island has got into your brains? You always talk about truth as if it were a patented British invention, yet no one is less willing to call a spade a spade. Look at Cairo, where you pretend to keep nothing but a consul-general, but where the ruler of the country can't turn over in bed without his permission. A consul-general! Look at your novels! Look at what you yourself are saying to me!" Matthews lighted a pipe over it. "In a way, of course, you are right," he said. "But I am not sure that we are altogether wrong. Spades exist, but there's no inherent virtue in talking about them. In fact it's often better not to mention them at all. There's something very funny about words, you know. They so often turn out to mean more than you expected." At that Magin regarded his companion with a new interest.