Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/77

 deep feeling. "I believe that, so far from having anything to be ashamed about, an American—particularly such an American as you might be"

"Might be!" he repeated.

"Has more to be rightly proud of than anyone else! And not alone because America is in the war now, but because—at the cost of staying out so long—our country came in when and how she did! You understand I say nothing against our allies—nothing like what you have said against our own country! Belgium got the first attack of the Germans and fought back, oh, so nobly, and so bravely, and hopelessly; but Belgium was invaded! France fought, as everyone knows, in self-defense and for a principle; England fought in self-defense, too, as well as for a principle—for were not the German guns almost at her shores? But we have gone in for a principle—and in self-defense, too, perhaps; but for the principle first! Oh, there is a difference in that! A hundred million people safe and unthreatened—for whether or not we really were safe and unthreatened, we believed we were—going into a war without idea of any possible gain or advantage solely for a principle! Oh, I don't mean to make a speech to you."

"Go on!" he ordered. "I've just made one; you go on now."

"You spoke about the Kaiser's order to us about how to paint our ships, as if the insult of that was what at last brought us in! How little that had to do with it for us! It merely happened to come at the time we could at last go in—when a hundred million people, not in danger which they could see or feel, decided to go in, knowing