But Van der Aa stopped abruptly. He turned half apologetically to the others, speaking a most vulgar and harsh Flemish: “’k Heb ’t verget—I’d forgotten what we came for—our moneys,” he said. “Sirs”—he addressed Wilson and me once more—“our pension moneys are overdue. We have received nothing since Antwerp was captured. The American Consul-General writes, but we receive nothing. Will you tell Washington of us? The Government have forgotten; we are far away, and so they have forgotten us.”
I turned inquiringly to Wilson.
“Oh, tell them you’ll get their money for them. Tell them anything,” he whispered, harshly, fumbling his handkerchief. “Stop that devil of a Van der Aa! You don’t understand; that man can talk you to tears!”
“Mr. Wilson knows all about the case,” I said. “He will cable to Washington the first time he goes to Rotterdam. We shall do everything in the world to get your money.”
Van der Aa thanked me with a gesture and a low bow, and repeated my words in Flemish to the others. They thanked us slowly. “And now, sirs——” he began again.
“Stop him, for God’s sake!” groaned Wilson.
“Mynheer van der Aa——”
“——the only things men gladly die for, freedom and union. Freedom and union, one and inseparable, now and forever.”
The spell came over us like a ghost—the ghost of something high and splendid—and the voice of America spoke in conquered Belgium. Not through American lips, but through the lips of an alien; and not the voice of America to-day, divided, disunited, enslaved in a thousand ways to fear and base interests; not the America, I suppose, of the sixties, blatantly provincial, cursed with over-confidence, torn with civil war; but the voice of the ideal America—that America of the spirit which Lincoln must have seen as Moses saw the Holy Land from Mount Nebo, the America which may be, which must be; the mighty nation like a city set upon a hill, with the glory of heaven shining upon her, and young men and women singing in her streets.