“If this country had been what your sniveling little magazine called it we’d never have gone into that fight.  You’re not even subtle enough to know that much.  We knew it would cost like hell, but we knew it was a great thing to do.  Not another nation on earth would have gone in for that reason.  That’s the trouble with you poor little shut-ins; you decide the country hasn’t any ideals because someone runs a stockyard out in Chicago or a foundry in Pittsburgh.  God help you people if you’d had your way about the war!  The Germans would be taking that nonsense out of you by this time.  And to think you had me kind of ashamed when I went over!  I thought you knew something then.”  He concluded on a note almost plaintive.

Merle had grown visibly impatient.

“My dear fellow, really!  Your point of view is interesting enough, even if all too common.  You are true to type, but so crude a type—­so crude!”

“Sure, I’m crude!  The country itself is crude, I guess.  But it takes a crude country to have ideals—­ideals with guts.  Your type isn’t crude, I suppose, but it hasn’t any ideals, either.”

“No ideals!  No ideals!  Ah, but that’s the best thing you’ve said!”

He laughed masterfully, waving aside the monstrous accusation.

“Well, maybe it is the best thing I’ve said.  You haven’t any ideals that would get any action out of you.  You might tear down a house, but you’d never build one.  No two of you could agree on a plan.  Every one of you is too conceited about himself.  If you had the guts to upset the Government to-morrow you’d be fighting among yourselves before night, and you’d have a chief or a king over you the next day, just as surely as they got one in Russia.  It’ll take them a hundred years over there to get back to as good a government as we have right now.

“You folks haven’t any ideals except to show yourselves off.  That’s my private opinion.  The way you used to tell me I didn’t have any form in golf.  You people are all gesture; you can get up on a platform and take perfect practice swings at a government, but you can’t hit the ball.  You used to take bully practice swings at golf, but you couldn’t hit the ball because you didn’t have any ideal.  You were a good shadow golfer, like a shadow boxer that can hit dandy blows when he’s hitting at nothing.  Shadow stuff, shadow ideals, shadow thinkers—­that’s what you people are—­spoiled children pretending you’re deep thinkers.”

Merle turned wearily to a sheaf of papers at his hand.

“You’ll see one day,” he said, quietly, “and it won’t be a far day.  Nothing now, not even the brute force of your type, can retard the sweep of the revolution.  The wave is shaping, the crest is formed.  Six months from now—­a year at most——­”

He gestured with a hand ominously.

Wilbur briefly considered this prophecy.

“Oh, I know things look exciting here, but why wouldn’t they after the turnover they’ve had?  And I know there’s grafting and profiteering and high prices and rotten spots in the Government, but why not?  That’s another trouble with you people:  you seem to think that some form of government will be perfect.  You seem to expect a perfect government from imperfect human beings.”