The Flying Inn | Page 7

left their homes with
or without their own consent. I can conceive no controversy more
perilous to begin or more impossible to conclude. I will venture to say
that I express all your thoughts, when I say that, whatever wrongs may
have been wrought on either side, the homes, the marriages, the family
arrangements of this great Ottoman Empire, shall remain as they are
today."
No one moved except Patrick Dalroy, who put his hand on his

sword-hilt for a moment and looked at them all with bursting eyes; then
his hand fell and he laughed out loud and sudden.
Lord Ivywood took no notice, but picked up the agenda paper again,
and again fitted on the glasses that made him look older. He read the
second item--needless to say, not aloud. The German Minister with the
far from German face, had written this note for him:
"Both Coote and the Bernsteins insist there must be Chinese for the
marble. Greeks cannot be trusted in the quarries just now."
"But while," continued Lord Ivywood, "we desire these fundamental
institutions, such as the Moslem family, to remain as they are even at
this moment, we do not assent to social stagnation. Nor do we say for
one moment that the great tradition of Islam is capable alone of
sustaining the necessities of the Near East. But I would seriously ask
your Excellencies, why should we be so vain as to suppose that the
only cure for the Near East is of necessity the Near West? If new ideas
are needed, if new blood is needed, would it not be more natural to
appeal to those most living, those most laborious civilisations which
form the vast reserve of the Orient? Asia in Europe, if my friend Oman
Pasha will allow me the criticism, has hitherto been Asia in arms. May
we not yet see Asia in Europe and yet Asia in peace? These at least are
the reasons which lead me to consent to a scheme of colonisation."
Patrick Dalroy sprang erect, pulling himself out of his seat by clutching
at an olive-branch above his head. He steadied himself by putting one
hand on the trunk of the tree, and simply stared at them all. There fell
on him the huge helplessness of mere physical power. He could throw
them into the sea; but what good would that do? More men on the
wrong side would be accredited to the diplomatic campaign; and the
only man on the right side would be discredited for anything. He shook
the branching olive tree above him in his fury. But he did not for one
moment disturb Lord Ivywood, who had just read the third item on his
private agenda ("Oman Pasha insists on the destruction of the
vineyards") and was by this time engaged in a peroration which
afterwards became famous and may be found in many rhetorical text
books and primers. He was well into the middle of it before Dalroy's

rage and wonder allowed him to follow the words.
". . . do we indeed owe nothing," the diplomatist was saying "to that
gesture of high refusal in which so many centuries ago the great
Arabian mystic put the wine-cup from his lips? Do we owe nothing to
the long vigil of a valiant race, the long fast by which they have
testified against the venomous beauty of the Vine? Ours is an age when
men come more and more to see that the creeds hold treasures for each
other, that each religion has a secret for its neighbour, that faith unto
faith uttereth speech, and church unto church showeth knowledge. If it
be true, and I claim again the indulgence of Oman Pasha when I say I
think it is true, that we of the West have brought some light to Islam in
the matter of the preciousness of peace and of civil order, may we not
say that Islam in answer shall give us peace in a thousand homes, and
encourage us to cut down that curse that has done so much to thwart
and madden the virtues of Western Christendom. Already in my own
country the orgies that made horrible the nights of the noblest families
are no more. Already the legislature takes more and more sweeping
action to deliver the populace from the bondage of the all-destroying
drug. Surely the prophet of Mecca is reaping his harvest; the cession of
the disputed vineyards to the greatest of his champions is of all acts the
most appropriate to this day; to this happy day that may yet deliver the
East from the curse of war and the West from the curse of wine. The
gallant prince who meets us here at last, to offer an olive branch even
more glorious than