"The Kaiser tells them that they are fighting in defence," said Phil. "They take their reasons from him."
"Pardon me, that is no answer."
"Because the Germans are pigs—all are!" interjected Madame Ribot. "I have never met one who wasn't, even their princes. They are spoiling the Riviera."
"Conquest, though Rome, as I read my history, never called it that," Phil went on, keeping to Helen's theme. "They want their neighbours' fields. It's a get-rich-quick sort of game in internationalism."
"And the French?"
"Only want to keep their fields, to keep their France!" he said. "This was in every face, it seemed to me: to keep their France."
"So the French are in the right, not because we live with them and love them, but at the very bar of justice!" said Helen. "All the peasants in Mervaux are in the right! Oh, I'm glad that I am not a German! And here we sit over our coffee so comfortably and those millions rushing to death! What poor little mortals we are! How lacking in imagination! Each with his little concerns in his own little hole—I grieving because the war spoils my exhibition! No one thinks of the agony of black years for the multitude of mothers and wives. It is too ghastly! Not one wants to die! Who should want to die when the world is so beautiful? Yet they go out to die!"
"Helen, you are overwrought!" said her mother. "There must be wars; there always have been wars."
"One might say that about thistles," Helen replied half inaudibly, staring at the tablecloth.
"And what can we do?" persisted Madame Ribot, who had held back her protests less because of the spell of Helen's fervour than from a hostess's politeness due to Phil's evident interest. "Yes, what would you do, my dear? Become a vivandiére? Surely not nurse! You have admitted that your nerves could not stand the sight of blood——" Madame Ribot broke off. She did not like to think of the sight of blood herself.