Imagine, sire, imagine that you are a factory worker. You're really poor. Your belly is never full. You freeze eight months of the year. Your children have no school, no doctor. Your country taxes you and sends your sons a continent away to die on a piece of land on the Pacific. Now sir, Japan is a third-rate power. If she defeats us, if Port Arthur falls, we shall be disgraced in the eyes of the world and here at home we shall have an insurrection on our hands.
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We can't run a modern war, sir. We're not fighting Napoleon this time! Germany has ten miles of railway to every one of ours and they have a hundred factories for every one of ours. All we have is men! We'll be slaughtered like flies!
So, you would like to be an opera singer? Yes, you have the chest for it.
You must understand that you are free to say whatever you like. You must also understand that I am free to shoot you for saying it.
Nicholas & Alexandra
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