What was their reward? The opulent
portion of them were saddled with an enormous income tax and high prices
of living through bad legislation, which made life a burden. The more
poverty-stricken suffered sympathetically in exactly the same way. We
won the war and we lost the peace. We fastened upon the shoulders of
the deserving, the wage-earning portion of the community, a burden
which their shoulders could never carry a burden which, had we lost the
war instead of winning it, would have led promptly to a revolution and a
measure at least of freedom."
"There is so much of truth in what you say," Tallente declared, "that I
am going to speak to you frankly, even though my frankness seems brutal.
I am going to speak about your friend Miller here. Throughout the war,
Miller was a pacifist. He was dead against killing Germans. He was all
for a peace at any price."
"Steady on," Miller interrupted, suddenly sitting up in his chair.
"Look here, Tallente--"
"Be quiet until I have finished," Tallente went on. "He was concerned
in no end of intrigue with Austrian and German Socialists for
embarrassing the Government and bringing the war to an end.
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