"I'm at a point in my life that I've worked like a dog to reach. Let the fellows that love the hero stuff give up their arms and their legs and the breath that's in them for something they don't know the meaning of. Because some big-gun of a Emperor out in Austria was assassinated, I ain't going to bleed to death for it. It's us poor devils that get the least out of the government that right away are called on to give the most, it's us—-"
"Hal, ain't—ain't you ashamed!"
"No. I ain't ashamed and I ain't afraid. You know it ain't because I'm afraid. I've licked more fellows in my time than most fellows can boast. I—I got the Fifty-fifth Street fire rescue medal to my credit if anybody should ask you. I—I—ask anybody from my town if any kid in it ever licked me. But I ain't going to fight when I ain't got a grudge against no man. Call that being a coward if you like, but then you and me don't speak the same language."
Her silence seemed to give off an icy vapor.
"That's what they all say," she said. "It's like hiding behind a petticoat, hiding behind a defense like that. Sure you ain't got a grudge. Maybe you don't know what it's all about—God knows who does. Nobody can deny that. There ain't nothing reasonable about war, if there was there wouldn't be none. That talk don't get you nowheres. The proposition is that we're at war, whatever you or anybody else may think of it."
"That's just it—we didn't have no say-so."
"Just the same, Hal Sanderson, this great big grand country of ours is at war, and needs you. It ain't what you think any more that counts. Before we was in war you could talk all you wanted, but now that we're IN, there's only one thing to do, only one, and not all your fine talk about peace can change it. One thing to do. Fight!"
"No government can make me—"
"If you want peace now it's up to you to help make it, a new peace and a grander peace, not go baying at the moon after a peace that ain't no more."
"You better get a soap box. If this is the way you got of trying to get out of something you're sorry for, I'll let you off easier—you don't need to try to—-"