Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/107

 through all the coasts of Israel. Perhaps we ought not to follow this example literally. We might, I think, adapt its leading idea to aur modern circumstances. We have at hand a fair number, not of malefactors, but of returned soldiers, already cut up by the enemy in various fashions, some with the loss of a leg, some an arm, some an eye or a nose or a larger segment of the face. What if to each town or village that received a German trophy, Congress should also send, to sit in the park at public expense, one of these more or less fragmentary men? Wouldn't it help unimaginative idealists to make rational estimates for the next war?"

"Thorpe," I said, "I'm glad you're absurd. If you weren't absurd, I shouldn't be at all sure you aren't seditious."