“I’ve already told you,” replied McCormack, “that I want to do everything on earth I can for you, because you’ve been very good to me; but I can’t do that. I like the military life. In a way it’s splendid and thrilling. It’s the fascination of it that makes it dangerous. There can be no greater menace to the liberties of a people or to the peoples of the world than the spirit and practice of militarism. Look at Germany, dominated, burdened and brutalized by her military machine, and striving, with no indifferent success, at the cost of millions of lives and seas of blood, to put every nation in Europe under her boot and spur. I tell you, Joe, I’m not a good enough soldier, nor a good enough patriot, to take a commission in the National Guard.”
At that Brownell became vexed and impatient.
“It’s just because Germany,” he declared, “has run amuck among civilized nations, like a wild beast, that she must be subdued like a wild beast, with powder and steel; and unless I lose my guess, the day is not far distant when we as a nation have got to pitch in and help subdue her. In a time like this, Hal McCormack, you can’t leave the Guard without disgracing yourself, and you can’t turn down a commission without doing a gross injustice to every one of your comrades in arms.”
But Sergeant McCormack was obdurate, and Brownell accomplished nothing in any interview.
And then, three days after the notice had been posted, Sarah Halpert sent for her nephew. She always had to send for him when she wanted particularly to see him. She declared that when anything especially important was on, he studiously avoided her society.
“It’s not that I’m so particularly anxious to see you first lieutenant,” she said to him. “I don’t give a rap which one of you is elected. It’s your lack of spirit that I deplore. To think that you, the son of your father, and the grandson of your grandfather, should talk about sneaking out of the Guard when your time’s up; and then to think that you should become a regular slacker just to avoid a contest for an honorable office! Hal McCormack, I’m ashamed of you and disgusted with you! There!”
“But, Aunt Sarah,” protested Hal, “I don’t want the office; why should I fight for it? I don’t want to be a lieutenant, nor a major, nor a brigadier-general. I’m satisfied to be a second sergeant in the company, and a private in the army of the world’s workers for peace when my term of enlistment is out.”
“Now, stop that pacifist, socialistic nonsense! This is no time for it. The thing for you to do is to prove that you’ve got red blood in your veins, as you have. If your mother had one particle of spunk in her, which she never did have, she’d make you go without your dinners till you come to your senses. Now do as I tell you; stand for that election. Show the kind of stuff that’s in you. Fight for it to the last ditch.”