The Power and the Glory

by Graham Greene

Now something in his tone infuriated the lieutenant. He said, ‘You’re a danger. That’s why we kill you. I have nothing against you, you understand, as a man.’ ‘Of course not. It’s God you’re against. I’m the sort of man you shut up every day—and give money to.’ ‘No, I don’t fight against a fiction.’ ‘But I’m not worth fighting, am I? You’ve said so. A liar, a drunkard. That man’s worth a bullet more than I am.’ ‘It’s your ideas.’ The lieutenant sweated a little in the hot steamy air. He said, ‘You are so cunning, you people. But tell me this—what have you ever done in Mexico for us? Have you ever told a landlord he shouldn’t beat his peon—oh yes, I know, in the confessional perhaps, and it’s your duty, isn’t it, to forget it at once. You come out and have dinner with him and it’s your duty not to know that he has murdered a peasant. That’s all finished. He’s left it behind in your box.’