Wilbur Cowen had hesitated in the matter of war. He wanted to be in a battle—had glowed at the thought of fighting—but if the war was going to be stopped in its beginning, what would be the use of starting? And he was assured and more than half believed that it would be stopped. Merle Whipple was his informant —Merle had found himself. The war was to be stopped by the New Dawn, a magazine of which Merle had been associate editor since shortly after his release from college.

Merle, on that afternoon of golf with Wilbur, had accurately forecast his own future. Confessing then that he meant to become a great writer, he was now not only a great writer but a thinker, in the true sense of the word. He had taken up literature—"not muck like poetry, but serious literature"—and Whipple money had lavishly provided a smart little craft in which to embark. The money had not come without some bewildered questioning on the part of those supplying it. As old Sharon said, the Whipple chicken coop had hatched a gosling that wanted to swim in strange waters; but it was eventually decided that goslings were meant to swim and would one way or another find a pond. Indeed, Harvey Whipple was prouder of his son by adoption than he cared to have known, and listened to him with secret respect, covered with perfunctory business hints. He felt that Merle was above and beyond him. The youth, indeed, made him feel that he was a mere country banker.

In the city of New York, after his graduation, Merle had come into his own, forming a staunch alliance with a small circle of intellectuals—intelligentzia, Merle said—consecrated to the cause of American culture. He had brought to Newbern and to the amazed Harvey Whipple the strange news that America had no native culture; that it was raw, spiritually impoverished, without national self-consciousness; with but the faintest traces of art in any true sense of the word. Harvey Whipple would have been less shocked by this disclosure, momentous though it was, had not Merle betrayed a conviction that his life work would now be to uphold the wavering touch of civilization.

This brought the thing home to Harvey D. Merle, heading his valiant little band of thinkers, would light a pure white flame to flush America's spiritual darkness. He would be a vital influence, teaching men and women to cultivate life for its own sake. For the cheap and tawdry extravagance of our national boasting he would substitute a chastening knowledge of our spiritual inferiority to the older nations. America was uncreative; he would release and nurse its raw creative intelligence till it should be free to function, breaking new intellectual paths, setting up lofty ideals, enriching our common life with a new, self-conscious art. Much of this puzzled Harvey D. and his father, old Gideon. It was new talk in their world. But it impressed them. Their boy was earnest, with a fine intelligence; he left them stirred.

Sharon Whipple was a silent, uneasy listener at many of these talks. He declared, later and to others, for Merle was not his son, that the young man was highly languageous and highly crazy; that his talk was the crackling of thorns under a pot; that he was a vain canter—"forever canting," said Sharon—"a buffle-headed fellow, talking, bragging." He was equally intolerant of certain of Merle's little band of forward-looking intellectuals who came to stay week-ends at the Whipple New Place. There was Emmanuel Schilsky, who talked more pithily than Merle and who would be the editor-in-chief of the projected New Dawn. Emmanuel, too, had come from his far-off home to flush America's spiritual darkness with a new light. He had written much about our shortage of genuine spiritual values; about "the continual frustrations and aridities of American life." He was a member of various groups—the Imagist group, the Egoist group, the Sphericists, other groups piquantly named; versed in the new psychology, playing upon the word "pragmatism" as upon a violin.

Sharon Whipple, the Philistine, never quite knew whether pragmatism was approved or condemned by Schilsky, and once he asked the dark-faced young man what it meant. He was told that pragmatism was a method, and felt obliged to pretend that this enlightened him. He felt a reluctant respect for Schilsky, who could make him feel uncomfortable.

And there was the colourful, youngish widow, Mrs. Truesdale, who wrote free verse about the larger intimacies of life, and dressed noticeably. She would be a contributing editor of the New Dawn, having as her special department the release of woman from her age-long slavery to certain restraints that now made her talked unpleasantly about if she dared give her soul free rein. This lady caused Sharon to wonder about the departed Truesdale.

"Was he carried away by sorrowing friends," asked Sharon, "or did he get tired one day and move off under his own power?" No one ever enlightened him.

Others of the younger intelligentzia came under his biased notice. He spoke of them as "a rabble rout," who lived in a mad world—"and God bless us out of it."

But Sharon timed his criticism discreetly, and the New Dawn lit its pure white flame—a magazine to refresh the elect. Placed superbly beyond the need of catering to advertisers, it would adhere to rigorous standards of the true, the beautiful. It would tell the truth as no other magazine founded on gross commercialism would dare to do. It said so in well-arranged words. The commercial magazines full well knew the hideous truth, but stifled it for hire. The New Dawn would be honest.

The sinister truth about America as revealed in the initial number of the brave new venture was that America was crude, blatant, boastful, vulgar, and money-grubbing. We were without ideals beyond the dollar; without desires save those to be glutted by material wealth. It was the high aim of the New Dawn—said the associate editor, Merle Dalton Whipple —to dethrone the dollar, to hasten and to celebrate the passing of American greed.

Not until the second number was it revealed that the arch criminals were to be found in the exploiting class, a sinister combination, all-powerful, working to the detriment of the common people; an industrial oligarchy under whose rule the cowed wage slave toiled for his crust of bread. This number unflinchingly indicted the capitalistic ruling class; fearlessly called upon the exploited masses to rise and throw off the yoke put upon them by this nefarious plunderbund. The worker's plight was depicted with no sparing of detail—"the slaves groaning and wailing in the dark the song of mastered men, the sullen, satanic music of lost and despairing humanity."

Succeeding numbers made it plain that the very republic itself had been founded upon this infamy. Our Revolutionary War had marked the triumph of the capitalistic state—the state that made property sovereign. The Revolutionary fathers had first freed themselves from English creditors, then bound down as their own debtors an increasing mass of the American population. The document known as the Constitution of the United States had been cunningly and knowingly contrived to that end, thus thrusting upon us the commercial oligarchy which persisted to this day. It had placed the moneyed classes securely in the saddle, though with fine phrases that seemed not to mean this.

"A conscious minority of wealthy men and lawyers, guided by the genius of Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison," had worked their full design upon the small farmer and the nascent proletariat; we had since been "under the cult and control of wealth."

After this ringing indictment it surprised no Whipple to read that we had become intolerant, materialistic, unaesthetic. Nor was it any wonder that we were "in no mood to brook religious or social dissension." With such a Constitution fraudulently foisted upon us by the money-loving fathers of the Revolution, it was presumably not to be expected that we should exhibit the religious tolerance of contemporary Spain or Italy or France.

"Immersed in a life of crass material endeavour," small wonder that the American had remained in spiritual poverty of the most debasing sort until the New Dawn should come to enrich him, to topple in ruins an exploiting social system.

Now the keen eyes of young America, by aid of the magnifying lens supplied by Emmanuel Schilsky, would detect the land of the free to be in fact a land of greedy and unscrupulous tyrants; the home of the brave a home of economic serfs. Young America, which fights for the sanctity of life, solid and alive with virile beauty, would revolt and destroy the walls of the capitalistic state, sweeping away the foul laws that held private property sacred. They would seek a cure for the falsehood of modern life in a return to Nature, a return to the self where truth ever is. They would war with the privilege and ascendancy of the group over the individual conscience. Already the exploiting class, as it neared the term of its depleted life, was but a mass of purulence. Society was rotten, the state a pious criminal, the old truths tawdry lies. Everywhere the impotence of senility—except in young America. We faced the imminence of a vast breaking-up. The subtlest oligarchy of modern times was about to crumble. The revolution was at hand.

A succeeding number of the New Dawn let out the horrid truth about the war, telling it in simple words that even Wilbur Cowan could understand. Having sold munitions to the warring nations, we must go in to save our money. In short, as the New Dawn put it: "The capitalistic ruling classes tricked the people into war." It was to be a war waged for greed. Young America, not yet perusing in large enough numbers the New Dawn, was to be sent to its death that capital might survive—the dollar be still enthroned. But the New Dawn was going to see about that. Young America would be told the truth.

Two of the Whipples were vastly puzzled by these pronouncements, and not a little disquieted. Old Gideon and Harvey D. began to wonder if by any chance their boy, with his fine intellect, had not been misled. Sharon was enraged by the scandalous assertions about George Washington, whom he had always considered a high-minded patriot. He had never suspected and could not now be persuaded that Washington had basely tricked the soldiers of the Revolution into war so that the capitalistic class might prevail in the new states. Nor would he believe that the framers of the Constitution had consciously worded that document with a view to enslaving the common people. He was a stubborn old man, and not aware of his country's darkness. Perhaps it was too much to expect that one of his years and mental habit should be hospitable to these newly found truths.

He was not young America. He had thought too long the other way. Being of a choleric cast, he would at times be warmed into regrettable outbursts of opinion that were reactionary in the extreme. Thus when he discussed with Gideon and Harvey D. the latest number of the magazine—containing the fearless exposure of Washington's chicanery—he spoke in terms most slighting of Emmanuel Schilsky. He meant his words to lap over to Merle Whipple, but as the others were still proud—if in a troubled way—of the boy's new eminence, he did not distinguish him too pointedly. He pretended to take it all out on Emmanuel, whom he declared to be no fair judge of American history. The other Whipples were beginning to suspect this but were not prepared to admit it either to Sharon or to each other. For the present they would defend Emmanuel against the hot-headed aspersions of the other.

"You said yourself, not a month ago," expostulated Harvey D., "that he was a smart little Jew."

Sharon considered briefly.

"Well," he replied, "I don't know as I'd change that—at least not much. I'd still say the same thing, or words to that effect."

"Just how would you put it now?" demanded Gideon, suavely.

Sharon brightened. He had hoped to be asked that.

"The way I'd put it now—having read a lot more of his new-dawning—I'd say he was a little Jew smarty."

The other Whipples had winced at this. The New Dawn was assuredly not the simple light-bringer to America's spiritual darkness that they had supposed it would be; but they were not yet prepared to believe the worst.

"If only they wouldn't be so extreme!" murmured the troubled Harvey D. "If only they wouldn't say the country has been tricked into war by capital."

"That's a short horse and soon curried," said Sharon. "They can't say it if you quit paying for it."

"There you are!" said Harvey D. "Merle would say that that's an example of capitalism suppressing the truth. Of course I don't know—maybe it is."

"Sure! Anyway, it would be an example of capital suppressing something. Depends on what you call the truth. If you think the truth is that Germany ought to rule the earth you got it right. That's what all these pacifists and anti-militaries are arguing, though they don't let on to that. Me, I don't think Germany ought to rule the earth. I think she ought to be soundly trounced, and my guess is she's goin' to be. Something tells me this New Dawn ain't goin' to save her from her come-uppance. I tell you both plain out, I ain't goin' to have a magazine under my roof that'll talk such stuff about George Washington, the Father of his Country. It's too scandalous."

Thus the New Dawn lost a subscriber, though not losing, it should be said, a reader. For Sharon Whipple, having irately stopped his subscription by a letter in which the editor was told he should be ashamed of himself for calling George Washington a crook that way, thereafter bought the magazine hurriedly at the Cut-Rate Pharmacy and read every word of it in secret places not under his roof.

Wilbur Cowan, though proud of the New Dawn because his brother's name adorned it, had nevertheless failed to profit by its teachings. He was prepared to admit that America groped in spiritual darkness which the New Dawn would flush with its pure white light; he could not have contended with any authority that it was not a land of dollar hunters, basely materialistic, without ideals, artistically impoverished, and devoid of national self-consciousness, whatever that meant. These things were choice words to him, nothing more; and he had no valid authority on which to deny that the country was being tricked into war by the Interests, something heinous that the New Dawn spelled with a capital letter. In a way he believed this, because his brother said so. His brother had been educated. He even felt shame-faced and apologetic about his resolve to enter the fight.

But this resolve was stanch; he wanted to fight, even if he had been tricked by Wall Street into feeling that way. The New Dawn said he had been tricked, and he supposed it was true, even if he couldn't clearly detect how Wall Street had made Germany pursue the course that made him want to fight. So far as his direct mental processes could inform him, the only trickery involved had been employed by Germany and Spike Brennon. Germany's behaviour was more understandable than the New Dawn, and Spike Brennon was much simpler in his words. Spike said it was a dandy chance to get into a real scrap, and all husky lads should be there in a split second at the first call. Perhaps Wall Street had tricked Spike into tricking Wilbur Cowan. Anyway, Spike was determined.

Their decision was made one day after a brisk six rounds of mimic battle. They soaped and bathed and dried their bodies. Then they rested—sitting upon up-ended beer kegs in the storeroom of Pegleg McCarron—and talked a little of life. Spike for a week had been laconic, even for him, and had taken little trouble to pull his punches. To-day he revealed that the Interests had triumphed over his simple mind. He was going and going quick. He recovered a morsel of gum from beneath the room's one chair, put it again into commission, and spoke decisively.

"I'm goin' quick," he said.

"When do we leave?" demanded Wilbur.

"I'm leavin' in two days."

"We're leaving in two days."

They chewed gum for an interval.

"Way it is," said Spike at length, "I'm nothing but about a fourth-rater in my game. I wasn't never a first-rater. I used to kid myself I was, but handier guys took it out of me. Never was better than a third-rater, I guess. But maybe in this other game I could git to be a first-rater. You can't tell. I still got the use of myself, ain't I? And I wouldn't be so much afraid as a guy who never fought no fights at all. It looks good to me. Of course I don't know much about this here talk you read—makin' the world safe for Democrats, and so forth, but they's certain parts of it had ought to be made unsafe for Germans. I got that much straight."

"Where do we go from here?" demanded Wilbur Cowan.

"N'York," said Spike. "Enlist there. I got a friend in Tamm'ny will see we git treated right."

"Treated right—how?"

"Sent over quick—not kept here. This guy is high up; he can get us sent."

"Good!"

"Only thing worries me," said Spike—"sleepin' out of doors. It ain't healthy. They tell me you sleep any old place—on the ground or in a chicken coop—makes no matter. I never did sleep out of doors, and I hate to begin now; but I s'pose I got to. Mebbe, time we git there, they'll have decent beds. I admit I'm afraid of sleepin' out on the ground. It ain't no way to keep your health."

He ruminated busily with the gum.

"Another thing, kid, you got to remember. In the box-fightin' game sometimes even second money is good. I pulled down a few nice purses in my time. But this here gun-fightin' stuff, it's winner take all every time. In a gun fight second money is mud. Remember that. And we ain't got the education to be officers. We got to do plain fightin'."

"Plain fighting!" echoed Wilbur. "And I'll tell you another thing. From what I hear they might put me to driving a car, but you bet I ain't going to take that long trip and get seasick, probably, just to fool round with automobiles. I'm going to be out where you are—plain fighting. So remember this—I don't know a thing about cars or motors. Never saw one till I come into the Army."

"You're on!" said Spike. "Now let's eat while we can. They tell me over in the war your meals is often late."

They ate at T-bone Tommy's, consuming a vast quantity of red meat with but a minor accompaniment of vegetables. They were already soldiers. They fought during the meal several sharp engagements, from which they emerged without a scratch.

"We'll be takin' a lot of long chances, kid," cautioned Spike. "First thing we know—they might be saying it to us with flowers."

"Let 'em talk!" said the buoyant Wilbur. "Of course we'll get into trouble sooner or later."

"Sure!" agreed Spike. "Way I look at it, I got about one good fight left in me. All I hope is, it'll be a humdinger."

Later they wandered along River Street, surveying the little town with new eyes. They were far off---"over where the war was taking place," as Spike neatly put it—surveying at that long range the well-remembered scene; revisiting it from some remote spot where perhaps it had been said to them with flowers.

"We'd ought to tell Herman Vielhaber," said Spike. "Herman's a Heinie, but he's a good scout at that."

"Sure!" agreed Wilbur.

They found Herman alone at one of his tables staring morosely at an untouched glass of beer. The Vielhaber establishment was already suffering under the stigma of pro-Germanism put upon it by certain of the watchful towns-people. Judge Penniman, that hale old invalid, had even declared that Herman was a spy, and signalled each night to other spies by flapping a curtain of his lighted room above the saloon. The judge had found believers, though it was difficult to explain just what information Herman would be signalling and why he didn't go out and tell it to his evil confederates by word of mouth. Herman often found trade dull of an evening now, since many of his old clients would patronize his rival, Pegleg McCarron; for Pegleg was a fervent patriot who declared that all Germans ought to be in hell. Herman greeted the newcomers with troubled cordiality.

"Sed down, you boys. What you have? Sasspriller? All right! Mamma, two sassprillers for these young men."

Minna Vielhaber brought the drink from the bar. Minna had red eyes, and performed her service in silence, after which she went moodily back to her post.

They drank to Herman's health and to Minna's, and told of their decision.

"Right!" said Herman. "I give you right." He stared long at his beer. "I tell you, boys," he said at last, "mamma and me we got in a hard place, yes. Me? I'm good American—true blue. I got my last papers twenty-two years ago. I been good American since before that. Mamma, too. Both good. Then war comes, and I remember the Fatherland—we don't never furgit that, mind you, even so we are good Americans. But I guess mebbe I talk a lot of foolishness about Germany whipping everybody she fight with. I guess I was too proud of that country that used to be mine. You know how it is, you boys; you remember your home and your people kind of nice, mebbe."

"Sure!" said Spike. "Me? I was raised down back of the tracks in Buffalo—one swell place fur a kid to grow up—but honest, sometimes I git waked up in the night, and find m'self homesick fur that rotten dump. Sure, I know how you feel, Herman."

Herman, cheered by this sympathy, drank of his beer. Putting down the glass, he listened intently. Minna, at the bar, was heard to be weeping.

"Mamma," he called, gruffly, "you keep still once. None of that!"

Minna audibly achieved the commanded silence. Herman listened until satisfied of this, then resumed:

"Well, so fur, so good. Then Germany don't act right, so my own country got to fight her. She's got to fight her! I'd get me another country if she didn't. But now people don't understand how I feel so. They say: 'Yes, he praise Germany to the sky; now I guess he talk the other side of his mouth purty good.' They don't understand me. I want Germany should be punished good, and my country she's goin' to do it good. That is big in my heart. But shall I go out on the street and holler, 'To hell with Germany?' Not! Because people would know I lied, and I would know. I want Germany should be well whipped till all them sheep's heads is out of high places, but I can't hate Germans. I could punish someone good and not hate 'em. I'm a German in my blood, but you bet I ain't a pro-German.

"Mamma, again I tell you keep still once—and now you boys goin' to fight. That's good! Me, I would go if I was not too old; not a better German fighter would they have than me. I kill 'em all what come till I fall over myself. You boys remember and fight hard, so we make the world nice again. I bet you fight good—strong, husky boys like you. And I hope you come back strong and hearty and live a long time in a world you helped to put it right. I hope some day you have children will be proud because you was good Americans, like mine would be if we had a little one. I hope you teach 'em to fight quick for their own good country. Now—prosit!"

They drank, and in the stillness Minna Vielhaber was again heard to be lamenting. Herman addressed her harshly:

"Mamma, now again I beg you shall keep still once."

Minna appeared from back of the bar and became coherent.

"I wassn't cryin' no tears for Germans—wass cryin' fur them!" She waved a damp towel at Herman's guests. Herman soothed her.

"Now, now—them boys take care of themselves. Likely they have a little trouble here and there or some place, but they come back sound—I tell you that. Now you dry up—you make some other people feel that way. Hear me?" Minna subsided.

"You bet," resumed Herman, "we're Americans good. Mebbe I can't tell people so now, like they believe me; it's hard to believe I want Germans whipped good if I don't hate 'em, but it's true—and lots others besides me. They come in my place, Dagoes, Wops, Hunnyacks, Swedes, Jews, every breed, and what you think—they keep talkin' about what us Americans had ought to do to lick Germany. It's funny, yes? To hear 'em say us Americans, but when you know them foreigners mean it so hard—well, it ain't funny! It's good!

"And me? Say, I tell you something. If any one say I ain't good American I tell you this: I stand by America like I was born here. I stand by her if she fight Germany just as if she fight France. I stand by her in war, and I do more than that. You listen! Now comes it they say the country's goin' to be dry and put me out of business. What you think of that, hey? So they will shut booze joints like that feller McCarron runs, and even a nice place like this. So you can't buy a glass beer or a schoppen Rhine wine. What you think? Mebbe it's all talk, mebbe not. But listen! This is my country, no matter what she does; I stand by her if she fights Germany to death; and by God, I stand by her if she goes dry! Could I say more? Prosit!"