(There is a sound of noise and bustle without, and with a loud laugh, Bill Harvey enters. He is big, muscular, rough, his voice thunderous. He emits cries of joy at seeing the group, shakes hands and claps Chris and Dan on their backs)

DAN: And so you weren’t torpedoed?

HARVEY: No, I’m here for a while—to get more mules and carry them to the front to kick their bit.

MRS. O’NEILL: You’ve been—over there?

HARVEY: Yes, over the top, too. Mules, rough-necks, wires, mud, dead bodies, stench, terror!

JULIA: (horror-stricken) Ah—Chris!

CHRIS: Never, mind, not for mine.

HARVEY: It’s a great life—not. But I’m off again, first chance.

MRS. O’NEILL: They’re brutes, eh?

HARVEY: Don’t remind me.

MRS. O’NEILL: (whispering) They maimed my man, before he died.

JULIA: (clinging to Chris) Not you, oh, not you!

HARVEY: They crucified children.

DAN: Little children? They crucified little children.

CHRIS: Well, what’s that to us? They’re little white children. But here our fellow countrymen throw our little black babies in the flames—as did the worshippers of Moloch, only they haven’t the excuse of a religious rite.

JAKE: (slouches out of his chair, in which he has been sitting brooding) Say, don’t you get tired sitting around grieving because you’re colored? I’d be ashamed to be—

DAN: Stop! Who’s ashamed of his race? Ours the glorious inheritance; ours the price of achievement. Ashamed! I’m proud. And you, too, Chris, smouldering in youthful wrath, you, too, are proud to be numbered with the darker ones, soon to come into their inheritance.

MRS. O’NEILL: Aye, but you’ve got to fight to keep yer inheritance. Ye can’t lay down when someone else has done the work, and expect it to go on. Ye’ve got to fight.

JAKE: If you’re proud, show it. All of your people—well, look at us! Is there a greater race than ours? Have any people had more horrible persecutions—and yet—we’re loyal always to the country where we live and serve.

MRS. O’NEILL: And us! Look at us!

DAN: (half tears himself from the chair, the upper part of his body writhing, while the lower part is inert, dead) Oh, God! If I were but whole and strong! If I could only prove to a doubting world of what stuff my people are made!

JULIA: But why, Dan, it isn’t our quarrel? What have we to do with their affairs? These white people, they hate us. Only today I was sneered at when I went to help with some of their relief work. Why should you, my Chris, go to help those who hate you?

(Chris clasps her in his arms, and they stand, defying the others)

HARVEY: If you could have seen the babies and girls—and old women—if you could have—

(Covers his eyes with his hand)

CHRIS: Well, it’s good for things to be evened up somewhere.

DAN: Hush, Chris! It is not for us to visit retribution. Nor to wish hatred on others. Let us rather remember the good that has come to us. Love of humanity is above the small considerations of time or place or race or sect. Can’t you be big enough to feel pity for the little crucified French children—for the ravished Polish girls, even as their mothers must have felt sorrow, if they had known, for our burned and maimed little ones? Oh, Mothers of Europe, we be of one blood, you and I!