Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/136

112  [Yet more emphatically.] I'll not do it!

 [Bewildered.] But I don't understand. Wasn't it for just such an opportunity of punishing this enemy of our people——  Yes, of dragging him down and destroying him——  But to take a man like that—in the middle of the night, too——  My dear child, would you have us take him on the Embankment, when he is out for his walk, under the eyes of his worshippers and followed by his police? The person who attempted to do that would be stopped, seized, perhaps torn limb from limb. No, there is only one safe way to carry out our righteous judgment on this monster who is preventing peace— to strike him down as by an unseen hand, when he is in the privacy of his own room, alone.  But that is assassination!  [Still more feverishly.] Even assassination is justifiable when it is necessary. Mercy, humanity, pity—we must wipe them all out now. War is war, and if a nation is to live——