Potter stopped and faced his companion a moment in silence. “Could you?” he asked.
“I think I could,” said Craig. “I think my country means all that to me.”
“Why?”
“That you will have to find out for yourself. I can’t teach you patriotism, love of country, in half an hour, nor in a course of twenty lessons. I couldn’t teach you to love a woman. Each man must find those things for himself.”
“I suppose so,” said Potter, uneasily, and they walked along together in silence.
“We’ve heard a great deal about military preparedness lately,” said the major, presently. “It’s in my mind that we need another sort of preparedness even more. There is such an emotion as patriotism, Mr. Waite, but it seems to be dormant in this people. A couple of generations of ease and prosperity and peace have lulled it to sleep. We have grown careless of our country, as we sometimes grow careless of our parents. But I believe patriotism is here—more than we need universal military training, more than we need artillery and ammunition and war-ships, we need its awakening. We can never have one sort of preparedness without the other.”
“I had never thought about it,” said Potter.
“Will you think about it, Mr. Waite? And when you have thought about it, see if you don’t find it demanding something of you.... Do you know that an army without aeroplanes is like a blind man in a duel with a man who sees? Think about that. I sha’n’t tell you how many ’planes we have, nor how many trained aviators. It would shock you.”
“I know something about that.”
“But have you realized that if events force us into this war we shall need, not hundreds of ’planes, but thousands—possibly twenty-five thousand?”