"Well, no; but he's a handsome fellow, and a gentleman, and his father was our friend, Amos. I can coach him, and give him a pretty fair idea of what war is like."
"There's some talk of schools being inaugurated for teaching such chaps as he, should the struggle really come; schools where the most approved methods of modern warfare will be demonstrated by our regularly qualified officers."
"Schools be damned, sir," the Colonel thundered. "What school, what infant West Pointer, is qualified better than I, who fought my weight in wildcats four successive years!—or you, sir, who I've no doubt fought well, too, although under the banner of a——"
"Truce, truce!" Mr. Strong cried, this time laughing till tears of pleasure ran down his cheeks. "At Shiloh, Roger, you knew how to honor a truce, for I carried the flag to you myself—and you weren't old enough to raise a mustache, either!"
"So you did, Amos; so you did—and, by gad, your cheeks were as smooth as a girl's, too!" the Colonel's voice dropped to the softness of reminiscence, growing harsh again as he added: "If I temporarily forget the rules of honorable warfare, it's because my memory has been corrupted by the vileness of those Outcasts who, in their ego-mania, blaspheme the Almighty God by claiming kinship with Him. I wish you and I could go over there and clean up that pestilential Prussian herd! By gad, sir, they've the hoof and mouth disease, each confounded one of them! Whenever I think of them I get rush of blood to the head!"
"And rush of words to the tongue, Roger," the editor added, good naturedly. "But, my friend, such blasts of hatred are too German to be acceptable. We're not a nation of small venom!"
"I don't give a cracky whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail vermin are calling us names!—and, if I can't fight, by gad, I'll cuss back!"
"No, you won't, and be part of the big, conquering nation that you are. Those 'hymns of hate' don't affect England!—neither do the scores of lewd verses that flow like filth all over Germany! They are merely the wails of disappointed people, Roger,—the shrieks of a cruelly tricked national soul! Let them pass!"
"Disappointed people fiddle-sticks!—and I say that it's a tragic mistake to let anything pass! The most dangerous propaganda waged by German spies in this country—more alarming in its results thus far than the blowing up of munition factories, the setting afire of grain elevators, the enciting of Mexico—has been the honorless skill with which they have fed the American mind upon the idea of a disgruntled Germany, a starving Germany, and all such twaddle! Can't you see why such tales are being circulated? Simply to inject into our minds the poison of national inertia, so that when war comes—as it some day shall—every fellow will be likely to think: 'Oh, it can't last long now!—let the other boys get ready; I haven't time!'"
"I hadn't thought of that, Roger."