“Sure!  Anyway, it would be an example of capital suppressing something.  Depends on what you call the truth.  If you think the truth is that Germany ought to rule the earth you got it right.  That’s what all these pacifists and anti-militaries are arguing, though they don’t let on to that.  Me, I don’t think Germany ought to rule the earth.  I think she ought to be soundly trounced, and my guess is she’s goin’ to be.  Something tells me this New Dawn ain’t goin’ to save her from her come-uppance.  I tell you both plain out, I ain’t goin’ to have a magazine under my roof that’ll talk such stuff about George Washington, the Father of his Country.  It’s too scandalous.”

Thus the New Dawn lost a subscriber, though not losing, it should be said, a reader.  For Sharon Whipple, having irately stopped his subscription by a letter in which the editor was told he should be ashamed of himself for calling George Washington a crook that way, thereafter bought the magazine hurriedly at the Cut-Rate Pharmacy and read every word of it in secret places not under his roof.

Wilbur Cowan, though proud of the New Dawn because his brother’s name adorned it, had nevertheless failed to profit by its teachings.  He was prepared to admit that America groped in spiritual darkness which the New Dawn would flush with its pure white light; he could not have contended with any authority that it was not a land of dollar hunters, basely materialistic, without ideals, artistically impoverished, and devoid of national self-consciousness, whatever that meant.  These things were choice words to him, nothing more; and he had no valid authority on which to deny that the country was being tricked into war by the Interests, something heinous that the New Dawn spelled with a capital letter.  In a way he believed this, because his brother said so.  His brother had been educated.  He even felt shame-faced and apologetic about his resolve to enter the fight.

But this resolve was stanch; he wanted to fight, even if he had been tricked by Wall Street into feeling that way.  The New Dawn said he had been tricked, and he supposed it was true, even if he couldn’t clearly detect how Wall Street had made Germany pursue the course that made him want to fight.  So far as his direct mental processes could inform him, the only trickery involved had been employed by Germany and Spike Brennon.  Germany’s behaviour was more understandable than the New Dawn, and Spike Brennon was much simpler in his words.  Spike said it was a dandy chance to get into a real scrap, and all husky lads should be there in a split second at the first call.  Perhaps Wall Street had tricked Spike into tricking Wilbur Cowan.  Anyway, Spike was determined.

Their decision was made one day after a brisk six rounds of mimic battle.  They soaped and bathed and dried their bodies.  Then they rested—­sitting upon up-ended beer kegs in the storeroom of Pegleg McCarron—­and talked a little of life.  Spike for a week had been laconic, even for him, and had taken little trouble to pull his punches.  To-day he revealed that the Interests had triumphed over his simple mind.  He was going and going quick.  He recovered a morsel of gum from beneath the room’s one chair, put it again into commission, and spoke decisively.