“There’s a man down in Washington,” he said in his gentle, reasonable voice, “with a hard job on his hands. He has a lot of decisions to make every day. We newspaper men have the same kind of decisions, but where ours affect a few thousands, his affect a hundred millions. From now on he’s going to have bigger decisions put up to him. He can lift his hand and there’ll be war to-morrow, and six months from to-morrow there’ll be thousands of us back home here in mourning. It’s a hard decision, Mr. Robson. You and I did our best to beat the President for election. We’ve differed from him in many things. But this is n’t politics. It’s something else now. And, knowing what he’s got to face, I don’t feel exactly like yelling in the President’s ears.” He resumed his glasses. “Seen the Governor since your editorial?”
“No. He’s up at his home in Spencerville.”
“It’s going to be put up to him pretty hard, too. Your outbreak is responsible.”
“How?”
“The German legislative outfit in Bellair,” said Kimball, who had an uncanny knack of knowing things before they were ready to be known, “is cooking up a bill to offset your editorial. They intend to put the State on record. The bill will call on the President and Congress to declare that any American sailing on a ship of a belligerent nation forfeits all right to the protection of his own country.”
“What will The Journal do about that?”
“Fight it.”
“Can we beat it?”
“No. But the Governor can.”
“Will he?”