Page:The haunted bookshop.djvu/139



"You can't help loving your country," she said.

"Let's go indoors," he answered. "You'll catch cold out here. I want to show you my alcove of books on the war."

"Of course one can't help loving one's country," he added. "I love mine so much that I want to see her take the lead in making a new era possible. She has sacrificed least for war, she should be ready to sacrifice most for peace. As for me," he said, smiling, "I'd be willing to sacrifice the whole Republican party!"

"I don't see why you call the war an absurdity," said Titania. "We had to beat Germany, or where would civilization have been?"

"We had to beat Germany, yes, but the absurdity lies in the fact that we had to beat ourselves in doing it. The first thing you'll find, when the Peace Conference gets to work, will be that we shall have to help Germany onto her feet again so that she can be punished in an orderly way. We shall have to feed her and admit her to commerce so that she can pay her indemnities—we shall have to police her cities to prevent revolution from burning her up—and the upshot of it all will be that men will have fought the most terrible war in history, and endured nameless horrors, for the privilege of nursing their enemy back to health. If that isn't an absurdity, what is? That's