“Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?”
“I don't want war!”
“You don't?”
“I want Christianity!” she cried. “I can't think of the Germans without hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't; it will only make more war!”
“Well, I—”
“Don't you see what you've done, you boys?” she said. “Don't you see what you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the rest; they thought they all had to send telegrams like that.”
“Well, the faculty—”
“Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them.”
“Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more to it than just getting even with—”
She did not heed him. “You're all blind! You don't see what you're doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place here. You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre—”