“I must get a truck,” he insisted. “What can you do about it if I take one of yours?”
“England needs men,” she answered. “But if you made it necessary I'd have to shoot you. If the mules are n't fed, you and other men can't fight. If you were fit to be a captain, you'd know that.”
The young captain told the story himself and his family enjoyed it, evidently admiring the Manchester lassie, who sat there as red as a poppy. They did not bend to the plumber's daughter, nor seem to try to lift her to the altars of their ancient hall.
Every one met on new ground, a ground where human beings had faced death together. It was sign of a new fellowship, too deep and fine for even a fish knife to sever. There was no consciousness of ancient class. There was only to-day and to-morrow.
It was the America I love—that spirit. The best America—valuing a human being for personal worth. Then I sailed for home. I went to Newport, to the Atlantic coast resorts. They were all the same.
The world had changed but not my own country.
I saw more show of wealth, more extravagance, more carelessness, more reckless morals than ever before, and—horrible to contemplate—springing up in the new world, the narrow social standards which war had torn from the old.
Social lines tightened. Men who had been overwhelmingly welcome while they wore shoulder straps were now rated according to bank accounts or “family.” The “doughboy shavetail”, a hero before the armistice, or the aviator who held the stage until November eleventh, once he put on his serge suit and went back to selling insurance or keeping books, became a nodding acquaintance, sometimes not even that.
I was heartsick. I thought often of those splendid men I had met in France and of the girls who poured tea for the King of the Belgians. I wondered if any one back home was “just nodding” to them.
Everywhere was the blatant show of new wealth.