He wondered at the men. There had been no word of sympathy for the dead; there had been no cry of anger wrung from them by this affront to the honor of the nation; there had been but one thought—dollars. Business came first. The prosperity of dollars and cents filled their minds to the exclusion of all other prosperities. Even the Senator, servant and representative of the people, was not serving and representing the people. He, too, saw only the effect of this thing on business.
“Does everybody think like this?” Potter wondered. It might be so. His friends at the table in the Pontchartrain bar had been surprised at the news, but he considered their actions those of men who had not been shocked or those of men enraged. Perhaps they, too, were of one mind with his father.... Perhaps all the people were of that mind. Perhaps that was the sort of people the American nation had grown to be....
“Dad,” he said, “if Mother had been on board—”
“She wasn’t,” said Fabius Waite. “Senator, this is mighty ticklish, and it will grow more ticklish. This one act can be smoothed over, but many recurrences of it cannot be smoothed over. Isn’t there some machinery to set afoot forbidding American citizens to cross the ocean? That would do it.”
“I wouldn’t care to introduce such a resolution,” said the Senator, “but probably somebody can be got to do it.”
“We’ve a right to travel,” Potter said, hotly. “Didn’t we fight a war about that once? You don’t mean to say, Dad, that you actually would have this country admit that it was afraid to claim its rights.... The world would laugh at us.”
“Let it,” said his father. “Another year or two of this war and this nation will top them all. We’ll be the financial rulers of the world. We’re getting there now, and nothing must happen to set us back.”
“And the world will despise us,” Potter said, bitterly. He was beginning to see more clearly now. He paused. This attitude of mind he was witnessing could not be common to all the people. He would not believe it. “Dad, think bigger. You men are wrong. You can’t head this off. It means war.... It’s got to mean war. And war means armies and cannon and shell—and aeroplanes. We’ve got to have them all. Think, Dad, and you’ll realize it.... Take a telegraph blank, Dad, and write the President. You can help with this plant; every other plant like it can help. Wire the President that this plant is at the disposal of the country for any use the country can put it to.... Tell him you’re with him. Tell him you can make guns or shrapnel-cases or motors for him as well as for England or France or Russia—as you are making them.... And aeroplanes. We’ll need thousands of them.... Give that job to me, Dad. I know aeroplanes—”
“You know mixed drinks and chorus girls and traffic cops,” his father snorted.
“You won’t do it?”