Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/298

Counter-Currents family," so that we could all learn—like the old ladies in "Punch"—to fire a gun, there was something profoundly sad in words so ill-judged and so fatuous. It cannot be a matter of no moment that, in the hour of our danger and indecision, thousands of people stand ready to applaud the disloyal utterances which should affront every honourable man or woman who hears them.

The "Yale Review" quotes the remark of a "foreigner" that Americans are always saying, "I don t care." The phrase is popular, and sounds disheartening; but if we spare ourselves concern over trivial things (if, for example, we were not excited or inflamed by Captain von Papen's calling us "idiotic Yankees"), it does not follow that big issues leave us unmoved. If they did, if they ever should, the word Americanism might as well be obliterated from the language. The consistent nationalism for which it stands admits of no 282