Jackson prepared for an effort of tact. "I hear," he said, "you've got quite a lot of troops across already."
They told him—and his eyes opened.
"What!" he said. "And how many——?" He digested the answers for a moment, and decided that his store of tact could be pigeon-holed again for a while. "But what about—your papers haven't—I don't call that talking much. We still think you're just beginning."
"So we are,—we've hardly started. But our papers were given the wise word, and they don't talk war secrets."
Jackson readjusted his ideas slightly, and his attitude deflated itself. The transportation of the First Expeditionary Force had been talked of as a big thing, but this—and he had until then heard no whisper of it.
"And the country?" he asked. "What about all your pro-Germans and aliens?"
"They don't," came the answer. "What do you think of Wilson now?" Jackson edged away to cover again. "He's a very fine statesman, and a much bigger man than we thought him once."
"Same here; and he knows his America. He waited and he waited, and all the time the country was just getting more raw about the Germans, and then when he was good and ready he came in; and I guess now he's got the country solid."
Jackson pondered this for a moment, studying the clean-cut young faces—all of the universal "Naval" stamp—around him.
"I don't know," he said slowly, "that it wouldn't have been better for us if we'd been able to stop out a few months ourselves at first. It would have made us more solid too. But we simply had to come in at once."