Men of good-will and self-sacrifice are doing it now--are laying down their priceless lives to root out ...
to root our...." Of course they _were_ rooting them out.
It didn't matter to me.

One supposes that that sort of native exists for that sort of thing--to be rooted out by men of good-will, with careers to make.

The point was that that was what they were really doing out there--rooting out the barbarians as well as the barbarism, and proving themselves worthy of their hire.

And I had been writing them up and was no better than the farcical governor of a department who would write on the morrow to protest that that was what they did not do.

You see I had a sort of personal pride in those days; and preferred to think of myself as a decent person.