“They tried to blow up the shop,” Potter said, briefly.
“We’ve got to act as if we knew they were going to try to blow up this shop.... Your German-Americans in Detroit have been pretty well-behaved.”
“Yes,” said Potter. “There was any quantity of talk before April sixth. I imagine they’ve quieted down now. Personally I’ve thought it was just talk and a natural sympathy.”
“Ninety per cent. of the Germans in this country wish we would hang the other ten per cent. so they could live in peace. But we can’t forget the other ten per cent. They’re bad, and they mean business. It’s hard to make folks believe it, though. Somehow Americans don’t take spies and that sort of thing seriously. It looks sometimes as if they didn’t take war seriously.”
“Yes,” said Potter. “There wasn’t any big wave of excitement when war was declared. The people took it complacently. They don’t realize.”
“They won’t realize until some morning’s paper is full of lists of the dead.”
“Out here we have a sort of attitude that seems to say, ‘Well, we’ve gone to war, but we aren’t going to get hurt.’”
“It isn’t my job to wake them up. I’ll be busy keeping information from getting out of this place—and gentlemen with bombs from getting in.”
“And my job,” said Potter, gravely, “is to make motors.... To make motors quickly,” he said, his voice coming to life, his eyes awakening to a glow of enthusiasm. “It’s a fine job—the best job in the world. Some day the air of France will be dark with American ’planes, and I’ll have helped. I can almost see it—hundreds and thousands of aeroplanes with their noses pointed toward Berlin, and nothing on God’s footstool to stop them. Enough of them to drive the German out of the air and keep him out.... And then we’ll play with him from the air.... A barrage of American aeroplanes behind the German lines—imagine that!—cutting them off, smashing their communications! All we’ve got to have is enough—and the war’s over.”
The Secret Service man looked at Potter quietly. “You’re not taking this war so placidly,” he said.