“We won’t argue about their wisdom. Whether they were wise or foolish, they seem to have sunk the Lusitania.” Fabius Waite paused. “And when all’s said and done it won’t be the Senate nor the President nor business which determines what we will do about it. It’s the people who will make up their minds. Don’t lose sight of that.”
“Public opinion can be molded.”
“For a while and to an extent.... I believe this thing can be handled so that nothing will come of it. It will take careful handling. You agree with me, do you not, Senator, that neither the people nor the business of the Middle West want war?”
“Certainly I do.”
“I have no doubt you will intimate to the President that you have grave doubts if the Middle West will follow him into war—will back him up in any belligerent attitude he may have in mind to assume.” Fabius Waite’s eyes were on the Senator’s face, and none could tell what thoughts stirred behind them. He did not order, did not direct, did not suggest, but he was imposing his will on this imposing member of an august body as surely and as relentlessly as if he held a revolver at the Senator’s head.
“I feel it my duty to intimate as much to him,” said the Senator.
“There must, of course, be a protest,” said Fabius White. “News that the President is preparing a note to the German government will hold the people in check. I incline to believe they will wait for it to see what the President thinks.... If it should take time to prepare, so much the better. It would give the country time to cool off.”
“The people have seen what war means,” said the Senator. “They’ve seen Belgium and France.... They’ve no stomach for a dose like that. Handle this thing right—let them get over the first shock of it—and the excitement will die down. The people are sheep.... Yes, you’re perfectly right about delay.”
Potter had hurried to his father, his soul a flame of emotion. The flame was being quenched. The boy stood silent, looking from one to the other of these men, hurt, amazed. Just why he had come or what he had expected his father to do he did not know. Impulse had brought him. The word patriotism was not in his vocabulary, as it was not in the vocabularies of millions of Americans on that seventh day of May. But some spring had been touched, something had been set in motion by the news of that atrocity which would be heralded from one end to the other of the Germanic Empire as a splendid feat of arms. The thing was wrong: the evil of it had seared through to the uneasy soul of the boy and had set afoot within him something which he did not understand as yet.... He was not able now to say, “Civis Americanus sum.”
It was not reason that had brought him. It was no conscious surge of loyalty to his country. It was something—something he felt to be right. Perhaps there was a tinge of adventure in it; perhaps his youth heard the rolling of martial drums and saw the unfurling of flags of war.... But he was right and these men were wrong. That he knew.