ittle group of wilful men," the eleven
who came near to shipwrecking the country, were equally bad, perhaps,
but they are forgotten. La Follette stands for them and bears the curses
of his countrymen, which they all earned.

_Englishman_. Their ignominy served America; it roused the country to
clean its Augean stables.

_American_. The war purified with fire the legislative soul.

_Englishman_. Exactly. Men are human still, certainly, yet genuine
patriotism appears to be a _sine qua non_ now, where bombast answered in
the old day. Corruption is no longer accepted. Public men then were
surprisingly simple, surprisingly cheap and limited in their methods.
There were two rules for public and private life. It was thought
quixotic, I gather from studying the documents of the time, to expect
anything different. And how easily the change came!

_American_. The nation rose and demanded honesty, and honesty was there.
The enormous majority of decent people woke from a discontented apathy
and took charge. Men sprang into place naturally and served the nation.
The old log-rolling, brainless, greedy public officials were thrown
into the junk-heap. As if by magic the stress of the war wrung out the
rinsings and the scourings and left the fabric clean.

_Englishman_. The stress of the war affected more than internal
politics. You and I, General, are used to a standard of conduct between
responsible nations as high as that taken for granted between
responsible persons. But, if one considers, that was far from the case a
hundred years ago. It was in 1914, that von Bethmann-Hollweg spoke of "a
scrap of paper."

_American_. Ah--Germans!

_Englishman_. Certainly one does not expect honor or sincerity from
German psychology. Even the little Teutonic Republic of to-day is
tricky, scheming always to get a foothold for power, a beginning for the
army they will never again be allowed to have. Even after the Kaiser and
the Crown Prince and the other rascals were punished they tried to cheat
us, if you remember. Yet it is not that which I had in mind. The point I
was making was that today it would be out of drawing for a government
even of charlatans, like the Prussians, to advance the sort of claims
which they did. In commonplace words, it was expected then that
governments, as against each other, would be self-seeking. To-day
decency demands that they should be, as men must be, unselfish.

_America_. (_Musingly_.) It's odd how long it