If he had been modest, reciting his legends only after repeated urging; if he had understood why the persons here wanted his legends and how fickle their worship was, he might not have become the pest that he was to be a few years later. But the more he realized that interest in him was waning, the more he was whetted to invest fresh details and to tell his bloody fables to those who no longer cared to listen. After a while he insisted on telling them to persons who were bored and impatient; and as his nation was restored, year by year, to prosperity and interest in disarmament and world courts, John’s power diminished, his exploits were forgotten, and he himself became a pale and humorless nuisance. He did not understand that a revulsion against war had overtaken his country. When persons tried to shrug him into silence, or told him, with a contemptuous grimace, that he was a bad citizen, he became comically aggressive in his bearing and blasphemous in his speech. He said there should be another war—with Japan, perhaps—and declared that he would be the first to enlist. He swaggered and got into drunken brawls, and twice for disturbing the peace was thrown into jail.
“You’re a bad citizen,” said Cuthwright, the banker. “The United States has always been a peace-loving nation. We were dragged into that last damned war by a cowardly President who promised to keep us out of it. And now look at our war debts!”
“Sure,” said John. “Why don’t we go over with an army and collect them?”
“Collect hell! Keep out of Europe, that’s what I say. That’s what Washington said. It’s men like you, Benton, who get nations into war. You enlisted in that last one and you came back boasting of the men you’d killed and you’ve been boasting ever since. Why don’t you preach peace?”
“Peace!” said John, appalled.
“Yes, peace. Didn’t Jesus command us to seek peace? But you go around with your damned doctrines of hatred—”
“Preach peace!” cried John, aghast.
“Listen, Benton, you sound just like Mussolini to me. Why the hell don’t you go over to Italy? Anyway, we’re a peace-loving nation, and I’m telling you, Benton, you’d better change your tune. This city is getting awfully sick of you.”
Cuthwright was the greatest man in the city and his rebuke threw John into a terrific struggle. He felt angry and baffled and lost. He went to his father’s farm and sulked there, and then went to church and listened with doubtful ears to a plea for internationalism and the World Court. He wanted to rise and blaspheme the preacher; but he learned, after his sulking was done, that he had kept all the while, overgrown with boasting and anecdote, a belief in peace: it was there, under the fierce thicket of his words and gestures, and it came little by little like a thing out of hiding. And he wept one day in bitter astonishment and then felt a new and frenzied eagerness, as if he had come out of darkness, a vault, to look at a clear sky. He returned to the city and the first to greet him said:
“Well, how’s the braggart today? Hey, how’s your one-man war against Germany?” And another said: