“I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.”
I had seen that first flotilla of thirty-one ships sail down the St. Lawrence, out into the ocean, and over to the shores of England, as the first great gift of men which the New World had ever made to the Old, as some return for all the Old had poured out upon the New. I had seen it, for I was on it. We went gaily, as hop-pickers go to a bean-feast. We knew it was war, but the word had no meaning for us. What it meant we found out at Ypres, at Vimy, at Lens. But when I think of my country now I think of her no longer as a baby giant. She has become a girl widow—valiant, dry-eyed, high-souled, ready to go on with the interrupted work and do bigger work—but a widow all the same.
And the sword that had pierced one heart I was bringing to pierce another. I was sorry; but sorrow didn’t keep me, couldn’t keep me from being terribly in earnest.
And in on these thoughts Regina Barry broke as if she had been following them.
“Look at the waves where the sun catches them. Aren’t they like flashing steel? It’s just as if all the drowned hands at the bottom of the sea were holding up swords to the people of America, begging them to go and fight.”
I looked at her, startled. “You feel that way?”
She looked at me, indignant. “Certainly. How else could I feel?”
“Oh, I didn’t know. Americans feel so many different ways.”
“Because they don’t know. I’m going back”—she gave a light, deprecating laugh—“I’m going back to tell them.”
“Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don’t mean to say that I’m a Joan of Arc; but I shall do what I can.”
She stopped at the second name, though to me the fact did not become significant till afterward.
“That’s what I meant,” she resumed, “when I said I was going back on his account.”
“He doesn’t see why we should be in it. He’s like so many Americans; he hasn’t emerged from the eighteen-hundreds. He still thinks of the New World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old. He doesn’t see that there’s only one world and one race of men, wherever they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get over to paradise. They’re safe and can afford to dwell safely. They’re no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on earth.”