“Thanks, friend,” he said. “I feel almost that way, myself.”
“Whether you like it or not, it is so to-day,” said Magnus, “and the reason that internationalism will come as an American doctrine is just that. We are international, and not in a hundred years can we be anything else. This to you may seem abhorrent, but to me it is the greatest destiny that could come to us. You would wipe out our links to other nations. I say, keep them; do nothing to weaken them, and make them great bonds of political thought, that America may lead the world.”
“What gets me—and by George, it does get me—” Brinsmade blurted out, “is your assumption to speak for my country. Good heavens; my family fought in three wars, and you have been here twenty years and tell me what America is, and—damn it—the worst is, I believe you do know!”
“Yes, Mr. Brinsmade, I do,” said Magnus quietly. “What do you know of the great East Side of New York? What do you know of how multitudes think and act,—the great labor organizations, the I. W. W? What do you know of what you call the foreign press? Do you know that there are over four hundred newspapers published in a foreign tongue—German, French, Italian, Swedish, Jewish and Hungarian—and that they represent a circulation of millions? The foreign element that was born abroad, or whose parents were born abroad, represents twenty millions; you represent a dwindling minority. You represent—we are talking frankly—an insular element, and the strange thing is that you still persist in seeing America in that spirit of nationalism which existed in Revolutionary days. America has passed beyond such limitations, and you don’t realize it.”
“And this from a man who came to my country twenty-five years ago!”
“But who has, perhaps, a greater vision of your country’s mission in world affairs than you have,” retorted Magnus.
“You are probably right,” said Brinsmade. “You place crudely things that are coming into my mind and the minds of others like me. Probably we are not awake. Have we, the old American strain, lost our inheritance?” He added, as if to himself, “And if so, is it our fault?”
Up the deck a spear of light shot across the night from an open door. A group of young men, emerging from the card room for a breath of air, came shuffling down the deck, singing as they came.
I was drunk last night, dear mother;
I was drunk the night before,
And if I live till to-morrow,
I’ll be—
“Hello there—Littledale!”