Page:The web (1919).djvu/29

 significance of that "efficiency" of which our industrial captains sometimes had prated over-much. Yes, Germany was efficient!

The strain between the two countries increased as the blockade tightened, and as the counter-plot of the German submarines developed. Then came the Lusitania I can not write of that. I have hated Germany since then, and thousands of loyal Americans join in hatred for her. All of good America has been at war with her at heart from that very day, because in America we never have made war on women and children. We are bound by every instinct to hate any nation that does, Turk, German or ignorant savage.

The Lusitania was Germany's deliberate action. She arrogantly commanded us in a few newspaper advertisements not to sail on the Lusitania—as though she owned us and the sea. After the deed, she struck medals in commemoration of it. German church bells rang to glorify it. A German holiday was created to celebrate it. German preachers there and in America preached sermons lauding it. It was a national act, nationally planned, nationally ratified. From that day we were at war. Let those who like, of whatever station, say "We are not at war with the German people." That is not true. The German people, the German rank and file, not their leaders alone, were back of all these deeds and ratified them absolutely on both sides of the Atlantic.

From that day, too, the issue might really have been known. I went into the elevator of a building in my city, a copy of a newspaper in my hand with the black headline of the Lusitania across the page. The German operator of the elevator saw it as I turned it toward him silently. "Vell, they vere varned!" he said, and grinned.

That incident shows Germany in America, then and now, covert, sinister, sneering, confident, exultant. You could not find an answer you would dare speak to such a man. There is no deed that you could do. I pulled together, and only said, "It will cost Germany the war." And so it did.

But we did not go to war; we tried to keep out of the war. The daily page of red horrors fresh from Europe taught us what war meant at this day of the world.