eant war between us and Germany. Every brutal Teutonic
disregard of decency since then ought to have meant war--every unarmed
ship sunk by their U-boats, every outrage in America perpetrated by
their spies and agents ought to have meant war. I don't know how much
more this Administration will force us to endure--what further
flagrant insult Germany means to offer. They've answered the
President's last note by canning Von Tirpitz and promising,
conditionally, to sink no more unarmed ships without warning. But they
all are liars, the Huns. So that's the way matters stand, Thessa, and
I haven't the slightest idea of what is going to happen to my
humiliated country."

"Why does not your country prepare?" she asked.

"God knows why. Washington doesn't believe in it, I suppose."

"You should build ships," she said. "You should prepare plans for
calling out your young men."

He nodded indifferently:

"There was a preparedness parade. I marched in it. But it only
irritated Washington. Now, finally, the latest Mexican insult is
penetrating official stupidity, and we are mobilising our State
Guardsmen for service on the border. And that's about all we are
doing. We are making neither guns nor rifles; we are building no
ships; the increase in our regular army is of little account; some of
the most vital of the great national departments are presided over by
rogues, clowns, and fools--pacifists all!--stupid, dull, grotesque and
impotent. And you ask me what my country is going to do. And I tell
you that I don't know. For real Americans, Thessa, these last two
years have been years of shame. For we should have armed and mobilised
when the first rifle-shot cracked across the Belgian frontier at
Longwy; and we should have declared war when the first Hun set his
filthy hoof on Belgian soil.

"In our hearts we real Americans know it. But we had no leader--nobody
of faith, conviction, vision, action, to do what was the only thing to
do. No; we had only talkers to face the supreme crisis of the
world--only the shallow noise of words was heard in answer to God's
own summons warning all mankind that hell's deluge was at hand."

The intense bitterness of what he said had made her very grave. She
listened silently, intent on his every expression. And when he ended
with a gesture of hopelessness and disgust, she sat gazing at him out
of her lovely dark eyes, deep in reflection.

"Garry," she said at length, "do you know anything abou