“It was a cowardly abandonment of something which had come to be for me a religion, Dick. I think it was the greatest thing I ever felt—that thing which happened in 1912. It was to make, what I thought it meant come true, in Sabinsport that I’ve worked. It’s all over. I’ve no leader and no party. I don’t know where I am in the world. I’m utterly lost. What’s the matter with me? Tell me square, as you see it. What’s the matter, that I can’t get my fingers on this war, that I can’t feel it my affair? I believe I’ve got to do that, Dick, or give up the Argus—for the war’s getting Sabinsport. What ails me?”
It was a very humble Ralph that listened to the quiet voice of the man whom he knew to be his best friend, the man who at least had never wavered in affection in these long months when the two had been so asunder in aim and in thought. Dick had taken their differences for granted, he had never disputed, never been angry. It was always possible to talk frankly to Dick without impassioned or angry rejoinders. If that had only been possible with Patsy!
Now that Ralph had fairly put the question, “What’s the matter with me?” his friend did not spare him.
“Egotism is the matter with you, Ralph. You refuse to recognize that a time has come when the world has different interests from those which you think it ought to have. You have been going on the theory that the one thing that is wrong in the world is the corrupt and stupid relation between business and politics which has done so much mischief in this country. So far you have been unwilling to admit that any other form of evil existed on earth and the only way you were willing to fight this was your own way. You had selected your enemy, you had laid out your weapons. You would not consent to see other enemies or other weapons. You have considered every other interest that occupied men and women as an usurper, an intruder. The war called attention away from your fight for righteousness—therefore it must not be tolerated. You refused even to study the catastrophe. You took the easy, intellectual way of the pacifist—war is wrong, therefore I won’t try to understand this war.
“You’ve wanted Germany to be right because she had been right in certain things you had at heart. You picked out those things and would not see their place in her scheme. You rage at the use some of the mills and mines make of welfare work; their efforts to turn attention from a just distribution of profits, free discussion, full representation, by improving conditions. I tell you, Ralph, that is Germany’s use for all her social and industrial machinery. It carries with it no honest effort to appraise the value of the man’s contribution and see that he gets it; no determination to give him a free voice and a free vote; no attempt to arouse him to exercise his opinion, get from himself whatever he has in him that may contribute to the whole. It fits him into a scheme; all of whose material profits and privileges go to a selected few. Your industrial welfare jugglers are a perfect type of German rule. But you were so obstinate in your determination to have it as you wanted it that you would not see the likeness. It has been your opinion, your propaganda, your desires, that you clung to at a time when the very core of things just and decent in the world was attacked.
“Why, why should as sensible a fellow as you settle back on your particular interest in life as something permanent and essential, something to be done before anything else, and rather than anything else? How, in heaven’s name, can you suppose your conclusions are the final and supreme ones? How can you expect the world to give you right of way? Why, boy, if you read your books, you must know that since the beginning, men setting out to do one thing have had to do another. No man has any assurance that the thing to which he has laid his hand, however noble, however beneficent, may not be whisked out of the way like a toy. What is your way or mine to the sweating world? It turns up now one side and now another in its endless war for righteousness—it asks for this method now, and now for that; to-day for war by words, and to-morrow for war with fists. You can’t choose either where you’ll fight for righteousness or how, Ralph; you can only say you will fight for it—that much is in your power—but where? Insist on your place, and before you know it you are alone without helper or enemy—the fight has changed its field, its colors, its terms, its immediate object. Insist on your method! You might as well insist the day shall be fair. You fight in this world, Ralph, in the way the gods select for that particular day. You say you won’t countenance war, but what have you waged but war? When you did your levelest to stir the wire mill to strike two years ago, what was that but war—gaining a point by force? What but war are those campaigns of yours in the Argus? There’s many a man would prefer to face a machine gun to facing you when you’ve loaded the Argus.
“It’s a hateful, barbarous thing—all war by violence is. To drive men by hurting them is war, Ralph. Hunger, contempt, ostracism, do the work as well as Mausers and Zeppelins and submarines. Don’t be a fool any longer—and by being a fool I mean insisting on things you know aren’t so, and on methods you know the world has temporarily flung on the shelf. That’s been your trouble—clinging to things left temporarily behind. You say they’re defeated—lost—that all the betterments you and your friends had dreamed are ripped from the world. Nonsense! What’s going on in England and France? The recognition of the necessity of accepting as government practices many a thing you’ve been turning Sabinsport upside down to get. This war is righteous in aim, and all righteousness will be shoved ahead as it goes on. That’s what’s happening, Ralph. Governments and parties are admitting, without contention, the need and the justice of measures they’ve fought for years. After the war you’ll find this problem of yours half solved, and you will be forced to devise new ways of finishing the work, for believe me, Ralph, you’ll never fight again in Sabinsport in the old way—you won’t need to—Sabinsport is seeing new lights, dimly, but seeing them.”
“And what am I to do? I’m not the kind that climbs easily on a new band wagon, you know.”
“Ralph, I wish you’d try to forget the things you’ve been interested in; forget the Progressive Party, for instance.”
“Lord,” said Ralph, “I don’t have to do that—it’s gone—dead.”