I fell back again on what I had learned from Larry Strangways.
"But you're not far from the past of mankind. You inherit that as much as any European; and it isn't an inheritance that can be limited geographically." I still quoted one of Larry Strangways's letters, knowing it by heart. "Every Russian and German and Jew and Italian and Scotchman who lands in New York brings a portion of it with him and binds the responsibility of the New World more closely to the sins of the Old. Oceans and continents will not separate us from sins. As we can never run away from our past, Americans must help to expiate what they and their ancestors have done in the countries from which they came. This isn't going to be a local war or a twentieth-century war. It's the struggle of all those who have had to bear the burdens of the world against those who have made them bear them."
"If that was the case," Mr. Russky said, doubtfully, "Americans would be all on one side."
"They will be all on one side—when they see it. The question is, Will they see it soon enough?"
Being so interested I didn't notice that our immediate neighbors were listening, nor did I observe, what Cissie Boscobel told me afterward, that Hugh was dividing disquieting looks between me and his father. I did try to divert Mr. Thorne to giving his attention to Mrs. Burke, who was his neighbor on the right, but I couldn't make him take the hint. It was, in fact, he who said:
"We've too many old grudges against England to keep step with her now."
I smiled engagingly.
"But you've no old grudges against the British Empire, have you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've no old grudges against Canada, or Australia, or the West Indies, or New Zealand, or the Cape?"