It was not new talk, but it was a determined angle and he looked very fine and ready for trouble as he spoke. Even his political opponents apparently were glad to wish him luck. He was appealing to the sense of fight which in all men is stronger than the tendency to complain, and they responded.
“Good stuff,” said Dick.
“Old stuff, but it gets them because they’ve forgotten it in all the talk about the new stuff. There’s a shoddy kind of fatalism settling down over too many people. If we’re going to the dogs, let’s go—let’s have a good time while we’re going. Let each one of us get all the pleasure we can out of things with the least work and above all let’s have no sacrifices. It’s shoddy—more so than the old type of greed when men piled up fortunes for the sake of excitement and spent their money in gorgeous ways. Fortunes now go for gasoline and head waiters and jazz.”
Dick looked at him a bit oddly.
“Is this a national or a personal indictment?”
“National absolutely, except in so far as every individual contributes to the composite temper of the nation. And anyway it’s not an indictment. It’s an attempt at analysis. The condition may not be our fault at all and if it is our fault it’s hard to find the initial sin. It’s probably an inevitable condition. Blame it on the war if you like. Its shoulders are broad.”
“They need to be. When are you getting off? Saturday or Monday?”
“Monday, if you’ll come out into the woods with me over Saturday and Sunday. Otherwise Saturday.”
“Where to?”
“Anywhere. I’d like to cool my brain before I go away and I’d like a couple of days with you. We could go to Lake Carmine and spend the night at my cabin.”