“ Why?” Ruth turned, hot-eyed, from her search. Papers and magazines cascaded to the floor. She reminded Chuck of his mother when his mother was on the verge of administering “righteous” punishment. “Why do they have to go on forever scaring the daylights out of people?
You tell me why!”
“Just to try to keep ahead of the Reds,” he answered.
“I thought we were making peace with the Reds!”
“We’ve been ‘about to’ ever since I was in high school and maybe before that, for all I can remember.”
“Peace, peace, peace!” she said heatedly. “Why don’t we accept this last offer? The one they made in August?”
“We’re trying to, Mother.” Jim was obviously endeavoring to divert his wife. “The United Nations is trying.”
“Maybe they’re right,” she said. “Maybe our people—the military men and the big steel manufacturers—don’t really want peace.”
“It isn’t that, Aunt Ruth.” Charles tried to be lucid.
“Every time, every single time, we’ve thought we were on the verge of an understanding with the Kremlin—whammo! They broke loose somewhere else. Stop them there—get a deal set—and bingo! They hit in China again. Burma, the Balkans—”