“But I’m going to stay with you. That’s business too. And I’m going to double my space and go in daily. That ain’t business; but—but you know why?”
“I do not.”
“Mr. Galpin, I’m a Jew. I was raised on kicks and crusts in Mitteldorf. I came here a boy and got a living chance. I’m worth fifty thousand dollars to-day. I can’t fight, myself; but I’ll help any man who fights the Germans, at home or over there. You have, maybe, all the fight you can handle, and more. Yes? Well, that’s my help. No; you don’t have to thank me. It ain’t for that. I don’t like you or your paper any more after the war is over.”
He stumped out, leaving in The Guardian office a vivid contrast in practical patriotism between an Ellison seven generations in the United States, and a Levy, German-born and American-hearted.
Even among the Germans of a certain type the strange reactions of the war dissolved old enmities. Coming out of the Post-Office one evening, Jeremy found himself approaching Blasius, the little German-born hatter, who had withdrawn his thrice-a-week announcement from The Guardian, after the Lusitania editorial. Upon sighting the editor, Blasius squared his shoulders to a Prussian stiffness, set his lips, and all but goose-stepped up to the other.
“I wish to say a word to you,” he announced precisely.
“Say it.”
“Those Deutscher Clubbers; they are after you—not?”
“They are. Are you?”
“Mr. Robson,” said the hatter gravely, “while we are at peace I think of my good people in Germany and I hope we remain at peace. When we are at war once, I think of myself, a citizen of this United States; and I am at war too. As you are,” he added. “And I want my advertisement back in your paper, double space.”