“Well, the truth is, Fred,” said Ramsey one day, responding darkly;--“well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an experience--”
Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the “frat” would have pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning “co-eds,” or to be shared by “co-eds,” Fred thought it better to explain to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life, so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.
This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the “frat,” the Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of the “Track Team,” now training in the “Gym” and on the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came a shock which changed things for a time.
The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there. When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of miles from the murder.
Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the week's “frat meetings,” cursing the Germans in the simple old English words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in the action of the country. “I don't care _how_ insignificant we few fellows here to-night may seem,” he cried; “we can do our little, and if everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why, that'll be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all _over_ the United States to-night the people are feeling just the way we are here? Millions and millions and millions of them! Wherever there's an American he's _with_ us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans in this country of ours than there are big-mouthed lobsters like that fellow Linski! I tell you, if Congress only gives the word, there could be an army of five million men in this country to-morrow, and those dirty baby-killin' dachshunds would hear a word or two from your Uncle Samuel! Brothers, I demand that something be done right here and now, and by us! I move we telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer him a regiment from this university to go over and help _hang_ their damn Kaiser.”