1088
THE KING’S BUSINESS
only thing worth having in this world is power, and money’s its other name. The world belongs to the strong, and if the weak don’t want to throw in and work for the strong, like I do, let ’em keep out of the way or they’ll get hurt. Sentiment is nice in its place, but we let nothing stand in fhe way o f business.” This is just my recollection of a con versation that occurred seven years ago in Arizona between two idle cow-men on an afternoon when it was too hot to ride. As I have watched the drift o f things in the Southwest since that time, I have ceased to think of my old acqaintance merely as an imaginative liar trying to impress a sim ple rancher with his knowledge o f great affairs. The Mexican trouble has been remark able for the number o f its leaders. No sooner was one half-way into the saddle than another started up, apparently from the ground, seized him by the leg and pulled him down again. Each o f them pro claimed himself anxious to settle matters, but there seemed to be some influence more powerful than they which was equally anx ious to keep matters stirred up. The loot ing and the killing came off according to my friend’s schedule, but the American people were more sluggish than usual and their government stubbornly peacable. Raiding across the border was a master stroke. The people responded to the stimulus fairly well, the government decreed partial intervention, and the army is in M exico; that is, the candle is burning brightly in the midst o f an open powder-barrel. The activity o f raiding parties and the hourly peril of a brush between some Carranza hothead and the American regulars make it quite possible that general intervention w ill'be in full swing before these Words are in print. Thus, perchance, wars are made. Thus are affairs of state taken out o f the helpless hands o f the statesmen and managed for them. “ The system?” Quien sabe? Perhaps the President knows their names. Some of
his acts and words have led me to hope so. I do not care to know them. They do not matter. What matters to me is the wreck o f my oldest and dearest illusions. I was brought up on stories o f the Civil War. From the age o f seventeen up to twenty-five or so I felt a real disappointment that our for eign affairs did not give me a chance to offer my life for the old flag. And now the hour is come. Before this row is over many an American boy as good as I will drop among the Mexican mesquite and squirm his life away in the sand, while those shrewd, business-like birds, the buz zards, assemble one by one and stand around him, ruffling their rusty feathers and waiting impatiently for him to grow quiet. Dying for the old flag? In a way, yes. May the poor chap believe so as he rolls his last glance up to the steely blue o f the desert sky. But the more I think o f it, 'the more likely it seems to me that he is dying mostly for dividends. I do not think dividends are worth dying for— another man’s dividends, especially. The idea does not thrill me a bit. So as I contemplate Mexico the old military enthusiasm o f my'boyhood, like those machine guns at Columbus, gets jammed and will not go off. And though I am an American o f Yankee descent I cannot even get palpitant with enthusiasm over the bewildering millions o f profits that have come to us from the cataclysmic trade row in Europe. Perhaps I am fussy, but to me such profits are too suggestive o f the buzzard’s idea o f pros perity. Our fellow citizens who manufac ture munitions are all kind to their moth ers, doubtless, and regular attendants at church and all that, yet, while I will con cede them any amount o f virtue, I refuse to admit that they have any imagination. If they possessed such an article, those dol lars from across the sea would feel intol erably sticky in their fingers and the open ing steel doors o f their vaults would let out a stench o f stale blood. Patriotism o f the 1916 model, as I gather
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