In all this discussion, however, Dick saw that ingrained deeply in Sabinsport was the idea that keeping peace was a preëminent national duty. He found in the heart of the town a solemn conviction that a country ought to have a machinery that would keep its people out of war, that when things went wrong with other nations there ought to be a way to settle them without fighting. Although he felt that anger over the Lusitania—and perhaps something more serious for Germany than anger, that was contempt for the act—stayed and increased in the town, he knew that she clung to the conviction that there ought to be a better way than force to settle it. Sabinsport felt and argued very much as she felt and argued about the attempts in a neighboring State where lynchings sometimes occurred—that the punishment should be left to the law and not to a mob. To rush in now, as Captain Billy demanded, seemed to Sabinsport a little bit like mob action. She wanted a government that had a machinery to take care of such a task as this without forcing her to leave her honest business of earning a living to take up the abominable business of destroying men. She had an idea that we had a machinery for just this purpose. The question was, Would it work?
And so the town waited on events. She went about her business of feeding and clothing herself, but her ears were open, and if her mouth was shut her mind was at work, turning over the mighty and unaccustomed problems. Sabinsport was learning new words, struggling with strange ideas, trying to grasp their relation to herself. Did these things concern her and her business? If so, all right; but if not, well, she’d been trained not to interfere; and, above all, not to interfere in wars across the seas.
Of all the 20,000 people in Sabinsport, only one was aroused to immediate action by the Lusitania. A week from the morning that he had heard the dire news at Jo’s Mills, Dick came down to his breakfast to find his husky, cheerful, Irish Katie with swollen eyes and tragic mien.
“Why, Katie!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter? What’s Mikey been doing now?” He took it for granted it was Mikey. He had never known anything else to reduce Katie to tears.
“Oh, my God!” wailed the woman, “he’s gone—gone to the war—says he’s gone for you. You never sent him away from me, Mr. Dick, and never said a word to me. You haven’t a heart that hard. You couldn’t do a thing like that.”
“I certainly wouldn’t do such a thing, Katie. I haven’t sent Mikey away. I don’t understand it. Tell me what’s happened—that’s a good soul.” But all that Katie could find words to say was: “Read that—and that to me, his own mother.”
Dick took the crumpled, tear-stained letter and read:
“Dear Mother:
“I’m going to war. They’ll take me in Canada. You tell Mr. Dick to stop worrying because he can’t fight. I’ll do his fightin’ and don’t you go off your head. I can’t stick around Sabinsport any longer with such things doin’ in the world. The Dutchmen are off their bases—they’ve got to get back where they belong.
“I’d said good-by but I knew you’d make a row.