“What does the man in the fields, or the man in the street, care about all that?” said Magnus softly.
“If the French peasant and the French workman can understand that, I guess we can,” said Brinsmade. “I said France has changed me over to a belief in a strong national feeling. It has. I don’t want German militarism, but I want the sort of military education you see in the French army,—preparation, with absolute democracy.”
“Compulsory service?”
“Of course. And I want it because I want my sons to be educated into democracy, and I know no better way than sending them out for a year or two to rough it with the fellow who comes up out of the mines and fields, out of the city slums and the wharves. I want them to eat together, tramp together, sleep together, to learn how to talk to each other. I want them to respect a man, wherever found, and I want them to make themselves respected as men. Moreover, I want them to have a vision of what America is and can be. Why? Because the wealth I leave them is going to make them leaders and instead of artificial leadership I want intelligent leadership.”
“You’ll never get compulsory training in America,” said Magnus shortly. “That’s one thing I’m not worrying about.”
“If we need it for nothing else, we need it to digest our foreign classes,” said Brinsmade, warming up; “German, Italian, Russian, Greek, Swedish; we need it for self-education, to form our own race,—a clear-cut, united American type. But of course,” he said, stopping suddenly, “that doesn’t enter into your philosophy.”
“No,” said Magnus directly. “To me the greatness of America is that it is not American. It has the whole world in it and, as long as these world elements remain distinctly defined in their inherited traditions, just so long America remains the natural Parliament of Man.”
“The little Sassenach,” said a voice out of the night. “Damned if I don’t hope a submarine gets us.”
Brinsmade laughed.