“Oh, why can’t the nations of the Old World keep the peace like it’s been kept for a hundred years between Uncle Sam and his big northern neighbor?” sighed the tender-hearted Tubby sincerely. “Here’s a boundary of over three thousand miles, and not a single fort to mark the dividing line; whereas over across the water, look at the enormous fortresses France and Belgium and Germany have maintained, though none of the Belgians’ stood the awful pounding of those enormous guns brought up by the Kaiser’s troops.”
“There’s a good reason for that, Tubby,” explained Rob. “Americans and Canadians speak the same tongue, and as a whole have the same aspirations. They understand each other, you see. It’s different over in Europe, where different nations hate like poison. We don’t seem to meet with the same measure of success down along our Mexican border, because those greasers never can understand our motives, for we think along entirely opposite lines.”
“When are we going to have a great World Peace, and war be abolished?” begged Tubby, almost piteously.
“Search me!” said Andy. “Because I don’t believe such a thing ever will be, as long as human nature is like it is; though of course I’d be glad to see it brought about. If the nations of the world could only form some sort of practical union, like that of the States now, and so were bound to keep the peace, it might be done. Happy the man who has a hand in such a vast undertaking. If the chance came to me to handle the steering wheel of such a glorious job, why, I’d feel as lofty as—as that hawk soaring right now away up there in the blue heavens!”
Tubby mechanically followed the extended finger of the speaker, and then uttered a sudden startled cry.
“Hawk!” he ejaculated derisively. “That shows your ignorance, Andy. Hawk, do you say? Why, bless your simple and confiding nature, don’t you know that object away up near the fleecy white clouds, and heading due north at this minute, is nothing more or less than an aeroplane? Rob, am I right?”
Rob was himself staring upward, and he hastened to reply:
“That’s just what it is, Tubby. After seeing so many of those mosquitoes of the upper air currents soaring above the hostile armies across the big pond, you are able to tell one the minute you glimpse it. Yes, that’s an aeroplane, as certain as that we are standing here gaping up at it. I want you to notice that it’s heading directly so as to cross the International Boundary line.”
“What does that mean, Rob?” questioned Andy curiously, meanwhile continuing to crane his neck.
“Well, I’m only making a guess,” Rob ventured. “The chances are that pilot up yonder may be connected with some vile plot to destroy railroad property in the Dominion of Canada, and is now bent on spying out the land so as to make a chart of the country.”