“Why not? I have three young nephews over there, in the Scottish ranks. They need all the help they can have from us. If we don’t get in as a country pretty soon now—more than your boy will run away. Look at the fellows who’ve already gone from our colleges, and more going all the time.”
“Mr. Black,”—a solemn voice spoke from down the table—“I’ve been given to understand you are in sympathy with war. I can hardly believe it.”
Black looked at the speaker, and his eyes sparkled with a sudden fire. “That’s rather a strange way of putting it,” he said. “Perhaps you might rather say I am in sympathy with those who have had war thrust upon them. What else is there to do but to make war back—to end it?”
“There are other ways—there must be. A great Christian nation must use those ways—not throw itself blindly into the horrible carnage. Our part is to teach the world the lesson of peace as Christ did.”
“How did He teach it?” The question came back, like a shot.
The man who had spoken delayed a little, finding it difficult to formulate his answer. “Why, by His life, His example, His precepts—” he said. “He was the Man of Peace—He told us to turn the other cheek——”
Red’s keen eyes were on Black now. He had opened his own lips, in his own impulsive way—and had closed them as quickly. “What’s in you?” his eyes said to Black. “Have you got it in you to down this fool? Or must I?” And he forgot how hungry he was.
When Black spoke, every other eye was on him as well. He spoke quietly enough, yet his words rang with conviction. “My Christ,” he said, “if He were on earth now, and the enemy were threatening Mary, His mother, or the other Mary, or the little children He had called to Him, would seize the sword in His own hand, to defend them.”
Red sat back. Over his face swept a flame of relief. Tom breathed quickly. Samuel Lockhart glanced about him, and saw on some faces startled approval and on others astonishment and anger.
Then the talk raged—of course. This was in those days, already difficult to recall, when men differed about the part America should take in the conflict; when dread of involvement called forth strange arguments, unsound logic; when personal fear for their sons made fathers stultify themselves by advocating a course which should keep the boys out of danger. Several of the guests at Mr. Lockhart’s table were fathers of sons in college—substantial business or professional men alive with fear that the war sentiment flaming at the great centres of education would catch the tow and tinder of the young men’s imagination, and that before long, whether America should declare war or not, instead of isolated enlistments the whole flower of the country’s youth would be off for the scene of the great disaster.