s indubitable evidence of his Celtic blood.
Following the futile pursuit of an enemy for a quarter of a century, he
died and left the unfinished job to me. Had he been all Spanish, he
would have wearied of the pursuit a decade ago."

"I think every race has some definite characteristics necessary to the
unity of that race," Parker replied, with interest. "Hate makes the
Irish cohesive; pride or arrogance prevents the sun from setting on
British territory; a passionate devotion to the soil has solidified the
French republic in all its wars, while a blind submission to an
overlord made Germany invincible in peace and terrible in war."

"I wonder what spiritual binder holds the people of the United States
together, Mr. Parker?" Don Miguel queried naively.

"Love of country, devotion to the ideals of liberty and democracy,"
Parker replied promptly, just as his daughter joined them.

Farrel rose and surrendered to her his chair, then seated himself on
the edge of the porch with his legs dangling over into a flower-bed.
His face was grave, but in his black eyes there lurked the glint of
polite contempt.

"Did you hear the question and the answer, Miss Parker?" he queried.

She nodded brightly.

"Do you agree with your father's premise?" he pursued.

"Yes, I do, Don Mike."

"I do not. The mucilage in our body politic is the press-agent, the
advertising specialist, and astute propagandist. I wonder if you know
that, when we declared war against Germany, the reason was not to make
the world safe for democracy, for there are only two real reasons why
wars are fought. One is greed and the other self-protection. Thank
God, we have never been greedy or jealous of the prosperity of a
neighbor. National aggrandizement is not one of our ambitions."

Kay stared at him in frank amazement.

"Then you mean that we entered the late war purely as a protective
measure?"

"That's why I enlisted. As an American citizen, I was unutterably
weary of having our hand crowded and our elbow joggled. I saw very
clearly that, unless we interfered, Germany was going to dominate the
world, which would make it very uncomfortable and expensive for us. I
repeat that for the protection of our comfort and our bank-roll we
declared war, and anybody who tells you otherwise isn't doing his own
thinking, he isn't honest with himself, and he's the sort of citizen
who is letting the country go to the dogs because he refuses to take an
intell