“It’s a good deal like the military manoeuvre of the King of France and his forty thousand men.  I suppose somebody told him at the top of the hill that there was nothing to arbitrate, and to get out and go about his business, and that was the reason he marched down after he had marched up with all that ceremony.  What amuses me is to find that in an affair of this kind the roads have rights and the strikers have rights, but the public has no rights at all.  The roads and the strikers are allowed to fight out a private war in our midst as thoroughly and precisely a private war as any we despise the Middle Ages for having tolerated—­as any street war in Florence or Verona—­and to fight it out at our pains and expense, and we stand by like sheep and wait till they get tired.  It’s a funny attitude for a city of fifteen hundred thousand inhabitants.”

“What would you do?” asked Fulkerson, a good deal daunted by this view of the case.

“Do?  Nothing.  Hasn’t the State Board of Arbitration declared itself powerless?  We have no hold upon the strikers; and we’re so used to being snubbed and disobliged by common carriers that we have forgotten our hold on the roads and always allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way, quite as if we had nothing to do with them and they owed us no services in return for their privileges.”

“That’s a good deal so,” said Fulkerson, disordering his hair.  “Well, it’s nuts for the colonel nowadays.  He says if he was boss of this town he would seize the roads on behalf of the people, and man ’em with policemen, and run ’em till the managers had come to terms with the strikers; and he’d do that every time there was a strike.”

“Doesn’t that rather savor of the paternalism he condemned in Lindau?” asked March.

“I don’t know.  It savors of horse sense.”

“You are pretty far gone, Fulkerson.  I thought you were the most engaged man I ever saw; but I guess you’re more father-in-lawed.  And before you’re married, too.”

“Well, the colonel’s a glorious old fellow, March.  I wish he had the power to do that thing, just for the fun of looking on while he waltzed in.  He’s on the keen jump from morning till night, and he’s up late and early to see the row.  I’m afraid he’ll get shot at some of the fights; he sees them all; I can’t get any show at them:  haven’t seen a brickbat shied or a club swung yet.  Have you?”

“No, I find I can philosophize the situation about as well from the papers, and that’s what I really want to do, I suppose.  Besides, I’m solemnly pledged by Mrs. March not to go near any sort of crowd, under penalty of having her bring the children and go with me.  Her theory is that we must all die together; the children haven’t been at school since the strike began.  There’s no precaution that Mrs. March hasn’t used.  She watches me whenever I go out, and sees that I start straight for this office.”

Fulkerson laughed and said:  “Well, it’s probably the only thing that’s saved your life.  Have you seen anything of Beaton lately?”