Ramsey Milholland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 162 pages of information about Ramsey Milholland.

Ramsey Milholland eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 162 pages of information about Ramsey Milholland.

Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this.  “Brother Colburn is a perfectly honor’ble man,” said Ramsey, solemnly.  “He is one of the most honor’ble men in this—­”

“Of course!” she cried.  “Oh, can’t I make you understand that I’m not condemning him for a little flattery to me?  I don’t care two straws for his showing that I didn’t influence him.  He doesn’t interest me, please understand.”

Ramsey was altogether perplexed.  “Well, I don’t see what makes you go for him so hard, then.”

“I don’t.”

“But you said he was treach—­”

“I don’t condemn him for it,” she insisted, despairingly.  “Don’t you see the difference?  I’m not condemning anybody; I’m only lamenting.

“What about?

“About all of you that want war!”

“My golly!” Ramsey exclaimed.  “You don’t think those Dutchmen were right to drown babies and—­”

“No!  I think they were ghastly murderers!  I think they were detestable and fiendish and monstrous and—­”

“Well, then, my goodness!  What do you want?”

“I don’t want war!”

“You don’t?”

“I want Christianity!” she cried.  “I can’t think of the Germans without hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep myself from thinking of them as much as I can.  Already half the world is full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won’t; it will only make more war!”

“Well, I—­”

“Don’t you see what you’ve done, you boys?” she said.  “Don’t you see what you’ve done with your absurd telegram?  That started the rest; they thought they all had to send telegrams like that.”

“Well, the faculty—­”

“Even they mightn’t have thought of it if it hadn’t been for the first one.  Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into people’s minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them.”

“Well, it isn’t mostly vengeance we’re after, at all.  There’s a lot more to it than just getting even with—­”

She did not heed him.  “You’re all blind!  You don’t see what you’re doing; you don’t even see what you’ve done to this peaceful place here.  You’ve filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre—­”

“Why, no,” said Ramsey.  “It was those Dutch did that to us; and, besides, there’s more to it than you—­”

“No, there isn’t,” she interrupted.  “It’s just the old brutal spirit that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it’s the tribe spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  It’s those things and the love of fighting—­men have always loved to fight.  Civilization hasn’t taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them that loves to fight!”

“I don’t think so,” said Ramsey.  “Americans don’t love to fight; I don’t know about other countries, but we don’t.  Of course, here and there, there’s some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never saw more than three or four in my life that acted that way.  Of course a football team often has a scrapper or two on it, but that’s different.”

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Ramsey Milholland from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.