This quelled the disturbance, and Ted continued:
"This war's got to end in complete victory for the United States and her allies, for if the Germans win, they will ride over us all rough-shod and make us no better than slaves, just as they have done in Belgium and wherever they have marched their armies. We must win, as the President says, so that the world can be made safe for Christian ideals and for democracy."
"Stop a minute, kid," said Buck. "You are handin' out some pretty big words. I reckon we all know what Christian means, but a bunch of us may not be quite so sure about 'de-mocracy.'"
"Democracy," explained Ted, "is free government by and for the people, instead of high-and-mighty government by one man like the German Kaiser. You will see better what we'll be up against if the Germans get this country," the boy continued, "if I tell you about some of the things they have done and some of the things they want to do. After training for this war fifty years, they jumped on Europe, taking everybody by surprise. They have already conquered Belgium, Servia and Rumania, and they hold northern France, part of Russia and part of Italy. They want to take all the rest of Europe and then conquer the United States. They have said so. Some of 'em even say they ought to force the German language as well as German rule on the world, and they are so crazy with conceit that they say they have a right to do so because they are so much finer people than the people of other countries. Some of them even claim that the Germans have been divinely appointed to rule all nations."
"A little bit stuck on themselves, ain't they?" interjected Buck derisively.
"Why, I read," continued Ted, "of how one of their big preachers told his congregation: 'The German soul is God's soul; it shall and will rule over mankind.' And the Kaiser talks about 'the German God.'"
"You reckon they're such blame' fools as all that?" questioned Al Peters doubtfully.
"Germany is a fur ways and tales are pretty apt to grow as they travel," remarked a young man known as "Bud" Jones. "I know how a tale can grow in ten miles, let alone all the way across the ocean. It puts me in mind of the time Wash' Johnson was up before court."
Jones then related with humorous exaggerations how the story of a very small offense, on its eventful and roundabout journey "from Possum Trot to Crossways," became almost a murder in the first degree. "And when all the truth came out," he concluded, "there was jes' nothin' to it."
Several others recalled amusing anecdotes illustrating the powers of a rumor to expand enormously as it passed from mouth to mouth, and the effect was such that poor Ted saw his opportunity disappear for the time. He was too inexperienced a speaker to find a way to regain command of the situation, but he made an effort. He was further embarrassed as he took note that clumps of palmettos and scrub-oak thickets under the tall pines were becoming clearly outlined at a distance from the dying fires, showing that day had dawned and the time left him was short.