Olivia answered with her truth, placing her morality and her beliefs in the first place, because that was the very reason why she even started her whole organization in the first place, and not to create soldiers out of the people she helped, because she clearly understood that this was what James was hinting at.
Though she made a mistake.
Every person who received a bag of grain or a bottle of medicine knew that the money came from the pockets of James Bellini because Olivia refused to let the government take credit for a kindness they never actually showed.
She chose to be honest because she wanted the people to stop looking toward the capital for help and she wanted them to see that the only hand reaching out to them was a hand criminal.
It was a dangerous and a senseless choice to make but she felt that the truth was better than a false hope in a system that had abandoned them a long time ago.
