"Just a little childish about a piece of red, white, and blue cloth?"
"Perhaps so, my boy," was the answer. "Just about as absurd as you were over the red rag you lifted in its place. Why did you do it?"
"On the impulse of the moment, to express my feeling of contempt for war, and my faith in my fellow man."
"Exactly. So I acted on the impulse of the moment to express my contempt for that crowd of fools and fanatics—my loyalty and faith in my country."
"I can't understand how a man of your age, poise and pride, culture and power, could be so foolish. A sixteen-year-old school-boy on the Fourth of July, yes! But you——"
"Norman," the Colonel interrupted, in even tones, "I'm sorry I've been too busy for us to get acquainted. It's time we began. It may interest you to know that I, too, hate war—learned to hate it long before your Socialist orator was born—learned it in the grim University of Hell—war itself. Socialism has no patent on the hope of universal peace. I am a member of a peace society. I have always believed the Civil War should have been prevented. All the Negroes on this earth are not worth the blood and tears of one year of that struggle. Whether it could have been prevented God alone knows. When it came I volunteered—a drummer-boy at fourteen—and marched to the front beneath the flag you tore down to-day."
"I never thought of that, Governor—honestly, I never did!" the boy exclaimed.
"I went in," the Colonel continued, "with my head full of silly rubbish about the glory of war. When I beat the call to my first charge, and saw the men I knew and loved shot to pieces, and heard their groans and cries for water, I had no more delusions. I worked on the field that night until twelve o'clock, helping the men who were wounded—enemies as well as comrades. I learned the brotherhood of man and the meaning of red blood in the big, tragic school of life, my son. Many a boy in gray, whom I had fought, died in my arms while my heart ached for his loved ones in some far-away Southern home.
"But I knew the war had to be when once it was begun. I was fighting for the flag I loved—and I grew to love it better than life. To you it may be a bit of red, white, and blue bunting; to me it is the symbol of truth and right, liberty and human progress.
"My people in western North Carolina were all slave-holders and loyal to their state, except my father. He hated slavery, loved the Union, and moved on westward before the war. I saw them bury him in the flag you tore down to-day, my boy.