“Look at it this way for a moment, Dr. Ware. Very roughly, there are only two general kinds of men who go into the munitions business—those without consciences, who see the business as an avenue to a great fortune, eventually to be used for something else, like Jack here—and of course there’s a subclass of those, people who do have consciences but can’t resist the money anyhow, or the knowledge, rather like Dr. Hess.”
Both men stirred, but apparently both decided not to dispute their portraits.
“The second kind is made up of people like me—people who actually take pleasure in the controlled production of chaos and destruction. Not sadists primarily, except in the sense that every dedicated artist is something of a sadist, willing to countenance a little or a lot of suffering—not only his own, but other people’s—for the sake of the end product.”
“A familiar type, to be sure,” Ware said with a lopsided grin. “I think it was the saintly Robert Frost who said that a painting by Whistler was worth any number of old ladies.”
“Engineers are like this too,” Baines said.