“I don’t know and I don’t care,” replied Carter aggressively.
“It’s a type of paternalism, and that’s dangerous,” suggested Culver.
Carter replied with a glittering generality: “Your Uncle Sam has rolled up his shirt sleeves and means business.”
Carter always chuckled contentedly over the cartoons of the tall, lank figure with the lean face, grimly set jaws and starred top hat. It expressed for him in a human way his own patriotism. It filled him with pride and gave him confidence. It satisfied his traditional conception of Americanism. He even saw in the face a reflection of his own ancestors who had fought at Bunker Hill and through the Civil War. It was distinctly New England, but New England was still in his mind distinctly America.
And yet Carter was puzzled at first when he read the names appearing in the final draft lists—puzzled and a bit worried. These names were not like those that were signed to the Declaration of Independence or those who fell at Bunker Hill. Decidedly they were more like those found in to-day’s New York directory. This might have been expected, and yet it gave Carter something of a shock until one afternoon he saw a regiment of khaki-clad men marching down Fifth Avenue. Then he felt a lump in his throat that prevented him from cheering as loud as he wished. In uniform and marching to the stirring music of a military band these men were, every mother’s son of them, Americans. He saw the same lean faces, the same lank, sinewy bodies, the same clear eyes and set jaws. Their lips were sealed, so that it did not matter what language they spoke. In khaki they were all Americans—the same who fought at Bunker Hill.
The sight sent Carter home with a renewed enthusiasm, which helped him survive the shock of the news that the cook had, without notice, packed up her trunk and left to take some sort of job in a factory. But fortunately he had brought along with him a sirloin steak, which, broiled, made a very satisfactory dinner. A week later the second girl left.
Mrs. Carter took it good-humoredly, even with a certain amount of relief. She had turned to Red Cross work and one thing or another, but still she missed the care of her own home. Furthermore, she had been genuinely disturbed by the way the expenses had been creeping up. But Carter stormed round and spent half the next day trying to find some new girls. The agencies showed him a few old women and shook their heads.
“We can’t compete with the factories,” they said sadly.
“But, hang it all, what’s a man going to do?” he inquired petulantly.
The agencies, perforce, left him to answer that for himself.