Ida M. Tarbell

“ Could it be that Americans, trained to despise and hate war as a lower form of energy, an appeal only for those people who were ruled by tyrants and forbidden to express their will, to use their brains and self-control in finding peaceful conclusions for all misunderstandings—could it be that they, too, accepted it with this simple, “It is war”?
If the Great War came to the country, as Dick believed it must soon, would Sabinsport take it as she was taking the Border Trouble—send her men, readjust her affairs, go on with her daily duties? ”

“ And Otto didn’t understand, and Sabinsport continued to irritate and humiliate him.
The war coming when he was still in this mood aroused his enthusiasm. Now the world would have a demonstration of what greatness in a nation meant. They would see again on earth a real empire rise. So filled was Otto with this sense of the magnificence of German destiny, he felt no criticism for anything that Germany could do, no doubt of anything she said. If she invaded Belgium it was because France was already about to do so, and she beat her to it. ”

“ Love makes one sensitive—sensitive to fleeting shadows that others never see, to secret hopes and faiths that others never know. Dick had not been long home before he began to understand that Sabinsport, hammering at her war tasks like a Vulcan, hating her enemy as robustly and openly as any primitive deity, still was restless in heart, dissatisfied with the war, untouched by its loftiest aims and hopes. ”

“ What Ralph said was in that evening’s Argus. It was brief.
“When men go to war the appeal is to violence, destruction, death. He who can destroy most, kill most, is the superior. You take what comes in your path. To talk of laws of war is nonsense. To talk of mercy in war is to talk hypocrisy. You’re out to kill. You kill what’s in your way. To debate your right to do what will injure an enemy is not the way of war. It is the way of peace. The destruction of the Lusitania was an act of war—that hideous, senseless thing to which Europe has appealed. ”

“ Going to Europe was still an adventure. There had been a time when Sabinsport numbered so few people that had been to Europe that she had formed a society, “The Social Club of Those Who Have Been to Europe.” It had not lasted long, for she had a sense of humor which saved her from keeping alive that which savored of snobbery, and the Social Club of Those Who Have Been to Europe died a quiet and early death. ”

“ They were the best of friends, this eager, active, confident young editor and this cool, humorous-eyed, thoughtful young parson. Wide apart in birth, in type of education, in their contacts with the world, they were close in a love of decency and justice, in contempt for selfishness and vulgarity. Both were accidents in Sabinsport, and so looked at the town in a more or less detached way. This fact, their instinctive trust and liking for each other, and the clinching force of the great tragedy in which they had first met had made them friends. ”

“ This War Board had evolved from a group which for years had met regularly after supper in the men’s lounging room of the Paradise Hotel. Both Ralph and Dick considered it far and away the most entertaining center of public opinion in the town, for it offered a mixture of shrewdness and misinformation, of sense and cynicism, which were as illuminating as they were diverting—a mixture which spread, diluted and disintegrated, of course, into every nook and cranny of the town. ”

“ His exultation, naturally enough, made him resent the almost universal sympathy for heroic little Belgium. He resented the something like contempt for forcing the war—for all Sabinsport seemed to take it for granted that Germany had started it. What right, he asked himself hotly, have a lot of yokels like these—people who know nothing—nothing of the aspirations of a great nation, a nation with a genius for empire—people who can hardly name the countries of Europe and couldn’t, for the life of them, tell where the Balkans are—what right have they to an opinion? ”

“ He found in the heart of the town a solemn conviction that a country ought to have a machinery that would keep its people out of war, that when things went wrong with other nations there ought to be a way to settle them without fighting. Although he felt that anger over the Lusitania—and perhaps something more serious for Germany than anger, that was contempt for the act—stayed and increased in the town, he knew that she clung to the conviction that there ought to be a better way than force to settle it. ”

“ This crust over Sabinsport’s soul had more and more discouraged Dick through the winter. Hard as it was, however, he held on, in face of the town’s settled conviction, to his belief in final victory. He simply could not see either England or France giving up. It wasn’t possible. They weren’t made that way. They would die and die and die but not surrender; and it was this inner conviction that amounted to knowledge that was both his support and his torture, for he did not fool himself for a moment with any hopes of speedy victory. ”

“ What can the United States do if the day comes that England wants to drive her from the sea as she has tried to drive Germany—bottle us up. I tell you, Gardner, if we don’t join Germany in her fight for liberty, England will ruin us. England is the enemy of this country as she is the enemy of Germany. She can’t tolerate greatness. She fears it. She has expected to keep Germany shut in; she can’t tolerate our having a single colony. It’s your duty to America’s future to do your utmost to explain to Sabinsport what England’s inner purpose is. ”

“ When a young man of Ralph Gardner’s sure and lordly spirit eats his rare humble pie, he usually leaves no crumbs. He humiliates himself to the ground. Ralph was ready to do this now. He would write a letter, exposing his egotism, his self-centered narrowness. He would tell her why he was so unreasonable, so boorish. He wanted his own way in the world and resented a war that blocked it. He wouldn’t see a noble reason for the war because the war interfered with his noble reason—Ralph Gardner’s scheme of social regeneration. He wouldn’t spare himself, he would outdo Dick’s arraignment. ”

“ Why, boy, if you read your books, you must know that since the beginning, men setting out to do one thing have had to do another. No man has any assurance that the thing to which he has laid his hand, however noble, however beneficent, may not be whisked out of the way like a toy. What is your way or mine to the sweating world? It turns up now one side and now another in its endless war for righteousness—it asks for this method now, and now for that; to-day for war by words, and to-morrow for war with fists. You can’t choose either where you’ll fight for righteousness or how, Ralph ”

“ But Otto had replied hotly, “Give it away! It’s a fair game. I believe in what I’m doing. It’s war and fair enough. What I can’t tolerate is the hypocrisy of the American attitude. To pretend to be neutral and act as if you were insulted when it is suggested to you that you sell something so it will get to Germany as well as to England. To pretend to be neutral and to be concerned only with their rights, and yet tolerate with indifference England’s violations and rage against Germany’s.” ”

“ Sabinsport needed to feel that out of this sacrifice there should come some new conception of life, some greater guarantee of more joy and freedom to more people, some pledge that in future times there was hope of less sorrow, less hunger, less pain everywhere on the earth. This, she finally saw, was what it was all about; and in groping toward this realization there came to Sabinsport something that was akin to a new faith, and with this she was for the first time fully and unalterably reconciled to the Great War. ”

“ Not since the invasion of Belgium had feeling run as high as now. There was a keen personal anxiety lest her chosen side should be beaten, for the attack revealed to Sabinsport that she had a chosen side, that she cared—cared for the Allies; and, above all, cared for France.
Verdun broke a crust that had formed over the town; a curious crust which had grown thicker and thicker through the winter of 1915-16, justifying much of Ralph’s bitterness and filling Dick with increasing dread. Half of this was reluctance to going into war—not fear, mind you, not at all. ”

“ There was no doubt but that Sabinsport followed more carefully the famous fights of the English because Mikey Flaherty was with them. The Boys’ Club, the War Board, the Argus, Katie’s friends, Patsy at the High School and in the Women’s Clubs—all watched for the reports of what the Canadians were doing—talked them over, and wondered first if Mikey, and later if the Lieutenant, was there. It was the idea that somebody they had always known was living in the trenches that gave an interest and a reality to mud and rats and cooties, which grew with what they heard. ”

“ And then suddenly the American army did appear. There was Cantigny, and then, in the very nick of time, the last moment, when the wearied and overwhelmed French were actually in retreat, our boys came—Sabinsport’s boys; and, careless of the long journeys which had brought them to the spot—the sleepless hours, they broke over the foe, beat him down, beat him back, followed, defied, laughed at his boasted formations, his impregnable trenches, his deadly nests of guns. It was true, as the most experienced and hardened French cried, Rien les arreste—Nothing stops them! Nothing stops them! ”

“ He taught in the open of his approach—marshaled his armies in the open—built his ships in the open.
Otto began to feel an overwhelming contempt for the rest of Europe—that it should not understand what was writ so large before its eyes, that it should touch shoulders with a nation that for years had carried in its heart so wondrous and magnificent an ambition, that had so consistently and frankly prepared to make it real. Time they were put in their place—particularly the two, France and England, that called themselves the best the world has done so far. ”

“ No matter what we would do if we were given the direct alternative of sparing Germany or injuring her—an alternative which can only be hypothetical, and therefore should not be discussed now even as a ‘mere dream’—no matter, I say, what we would do if face to face with such an alternative, we don’t want people to talk to us now about sparing the smiling fields and cheerful little happy homes of Germany! It isn’t that we are bloodthirsty, but we are nauseated, Richard Ingraham, at talking about the blessed state of Germany compared with the desolation she has made in other countries. ”

“ Mining had been in the blood of Jack Mulligan. If he had had his way he would have taken a pick at sixteen, and worked his way up. His mother, long dead, had extracted a promise from her devoted but riotous husband that Jack should have the best education the country would afford, if he would take it. And because it was his mother’s wish, he had taken it; but he had turned it into the way of his own tastes. He had thrown himself heartily into the work of the great technological institute to which he had been sent. ”

“ HOW THE WAR CAME TO SABINSPORT
CHAPTER I “The town is going to the Devil, and the worst of it is nobody will admit it. You won’t. You sit there and smile at me, as if you didn’t mind having Jake Mulligan and Reub Cowder pry open ballot boxes. You know those two birds are robbing this village every hour of the day. Nobody with pep enough to sit up and fight ’em. Rotten selfishness, that’s what ails this town. People getting rich here and spending their money in the city. Women won’t even buy their hats here—starving the stores. ”

“ War means more war. Italy could not be held from the present horror. She remembered earlier wars. This war settles nothing. When exhaustion comes and arbitration begins—it will be by its wisdom that the terms of peace will be measured, not by the sons slaughtered, the villages in ruins, the debts only piled on future generations.
“‘It shames us to be at peace.’ Does it? Why? We have fought with our brains for the rights not only of ourselves but for all nations. We have won. The rights of all nations of the earth are firmer because of our victory. ”