PHILIP. Listen, mi Coronel. If I wasn’t good at this you wouldn’t have let me go on doing it so long. This boy is all right. You know we are none of us exactly what you would call all right. But this boy is pretty all right. He just went to sleep, and I’m not justice you know. I’m just working for you, and the cause, and the Republic and one thing and another. And we used to have a President named Lincoln in America, you know, who commuted sentences of sentries to be shot for sleeping, you know. So I think if it’s all right with you we’ll just sort of commute his sentence. He comes from the Lincoln Battalion you see—and it’s an awfully good battalion. It’s such a good battalion and it’s done such things that it would break your damn heart if I tried to tell you about it. And if I was in it I’d feel decent and proud instead of the way I feel doing what I am. But I’m not, see? I’m a sort of a second-rate cop pretending to be a third-rate newspaperman—But listen Comrade Alma—

[Turning to prisoner]

If you ever go to sleep again on duty when you are working for me I’ll shoot you myself, see? You hear me? And write it to Alma.

ANTONIO. [Ringing. TwoASSAULT GUARDScome in] Take him away. You speak very confusedly, Philip. But you have a certain amount of credit to exhaust.

FIRST COMRADE. Thank you, Comrade Commissar.

PHILIP. Oh, don’t say thank you in a war. This is a war. You don’t say thank you in it. But you’re welcome, see? And when you write to Alma tell her she brought you a lot of luck.

[FIRST COMRADE goes out with ASSAULT GUARDS]

ANTONIO. Yes, and now. This man got away from room 107 and shot this boy by mistake for you, and who is this man?

PHILIP. Oh, I don’t know. Santa Claus, I guess. He’s got a number. They have A numbered one to ten, and B numbered one to ten, and C numbered one to ten, and they shoot people and they blow up things and they do everything you’re overly familiar with. And they work very hard, and aren’t really awfully efficient. But they kill a lot of people that they shouldn’t kill. The trouble is they’ve worked it out so well on the lines of the old Cuban A.B.C. that unless you get somebody outside that they deal with, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like cutting the heads off boils instead of listening to a Fleischman’s Yeast Program. You know, correct me if I become confusing.

ANTONIO. And why do you not take this man with a sufficient force?