“She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right cause for war, than all this couldn’t be a cause of war.  Of course she had her regular pacifist ‘logic’ working; she said that since war is the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser evil can’t be a just cause for a greater.  She got terribly excited, they say, but kept right on, anyway.  She said war was murder and there couldn’t be any other way to look at it; and she’d heard there was already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting, and whoever did such a thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for murder.  Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she meant that she’d feel toward any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she said, yes, she’d have a horror of any student that enlisted.

“Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his lecture-room, and Joe said so far as he was concerned, he resigned from Burney’s classes right there.  That started it, and practically the whole class got up and walked out with Joe.  They said Burney streaked off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her desk—­and I guess she certainly deserves it.  A good many have already stopped speaking to her.”

Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat.  “Well, I don’t know,” he said, slowly; “I don’t know if they ought to do that exactly.”

“Why oughtn’t they?” Fred demanded, sharply.

“Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin’ for her principles.  She believes in ’em.  The more it costs a person to stick to their principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something pretty fine about ’em likely.”

“Yes!” said the hot-headed Fred.  “That may be in ordinary times, but not when a person’s principles are liable to betray their country!  We won’t stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn’t to.  Dora Yocum’s finding that out, all right.  She had the biggest position of any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and there wasn’t any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had the influence or was more admired and looked up to.  She had the whole show!  But now, since she’s just the same as called any student a murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flag—­well, now she hasn’t got anything at all, and if she keeps on she’ll have even less!”

He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his friend’s chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey’s motionless head.  His tone changed.  “I guess it isn’t just the ticket—­me to be talking this way to you, is it?” he said, with a trace of huskiness.

“Oh—­it’s all right,” Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.