As a matter of fact Uncle Sam had stood for it a good many months after that, and for acts even more barbaric. But now your Uncle Sam was right on the spot and Ben was on the spot. The two were one!
This was what Carter got hold of, suddenly, unexpectedly, unconsciously, as a man sees a vision. Uncle Sam was there not in the form of a middle-aged farmer in a starred top hat, but as one of the Marines, a tough, wiry young American fighter. And among these Marines was Ben, holding this ghastly line as in his play days he had helped to hold the football line. Uncle Sam was there as Carter’s boy—blood of his blood and flesh of his flesh and soul of his soul. And so in a sense Carter himself was there. This was his fight too. He and Uncle Sam were one! He and the nation were one. He and the brilliant flags flying unharmed here in the streets of New York were one. As far as Carter individually was concerned he was essentially all there was of the nation—just as, individually and as far as his own soul was concerned, he was all there was of God. But because of this, because the thought made him so big, he took in the others too—his boy, Kitty, his neighbors, the state and the United States, and finally God himself. And this God not only stood for justice and honor but was justice and honor, and Carter was He and He was Carter.
Now God and Carter and the boy and the Marines and the nation were all standing side by side behind a little town that until now had been no more conscious of itself than Carter had been. It had been merely Château-Thierry—a tiny village where simple men and women had gone about their humble business of living with little thought of the world at large. Now it was finding itself a turning point in the history of the world, with the sinewy young men from a country that had not been discovered when Château-Thierry already was hoary with age, rushing there to help keep it true. And with Carter some four thousand miles away staring from his office window and, quite unconscious of the business of the Atlas Company, praying not that the boy might be kept safe for his own sake, but that he might be spared to fight his best—Carter’s best, the nation’s best, God’s best.