"If that is what you really believe, there should be no difference for you between man and man, and so between country and country." "Quite true. But my powers are limited, so my worship of Humanity is continued in the worship of my country." "I have nothing against your worship as such, but how is it you propose to conduct your worship of God by hating other countries in which He is equally manifest?" "Hate is also an adjunct of worship. Arjuna won Mahadeva's favour by wrestling with him. God will be with us in the end, if we are prepared to give Him battle." "If that be so, then those who are serving and those who are harming the country are both His devotees. Why, then, trouble to preach patriotism?" "In the case of one's own country, it is different. There the heart clearly demands worship." "If you push the same argument further you can say that since God is manifested in us, our __self__ has to be worshipped before all else; because our natural instinct claims it." "Look here, Nikhil, this is all merely dry logic. Can't you recognize that there is such a thing as feeling?" "I tell you the truth, Sandip," my husband replied. "It is my feelings that are outraged, whenever you try to pass off injustice as a duty, and unrighteousness as a moral ideal. The fact, that I am incapable of stealing, is not due to my possessing logical faculties, but to my having some feeling of respect for myself and love for ideals." I was raging inwardly. At last I could keep silent no longer. "Is not the history of every country," I cried, "whether England, France, Germany, or Russia, the history of stealing for the sake of one's own country?" "They have to answer for these thefts; they are doing so even now; their history is not yet ended." "At any rate," interposed Sandip Babu, "why should we not follow suit? Let us first fill our country's coffers with stolen goods and then take centuries, like these other countries, to answer for them, if we must. But, I ask you, where do you find this 'answering' in history?" "When Rome was answering for her sin no one knew it. All that time, there was apparently no limit to her prosperity. But do you not see one thing: how these political bags of theirs are bursting with lies and treacheries, breaking their backs under their weight?" Never before had I had any opportunity of being present at a discussion between my husband and his men friends. Whenever he argued with me I could feel his reluctance to push me into a corner. This arose out of the very love he bore me. Today for the first time I saw his fencer's skill in debate. Nevertheless, my heart refused to accept my husband's position. I was struggling to find some answer, but it would not come. When the word "righteousness" comes into an argument, it sounds ugly to say that a thing can be too good to be useful. All of a sudden Sandip Babu turned to me with the question: "What do __you__ say to this?"