“Neutrality,” commented Andrew Galpin thoughtfully to his chief. “That’s good business for Mart Embree. He can preach neutrality and tickle the Germans at the same time, for our kind of neutrality in Centralia is sure hall-marked ‘Made-in-Germany.’ But how neutral are _we_ going to be?” “There’s no such thing as ‘how neutral.’” “Oh, is n’t there! Look here, Boss; what’s practically every paper in this State, on this war, except The Bellair Journal?” “German. They’re afraid not to be.” “Suppose a paper is really neutral; gives both sides an equal show. What’ll it look like where all the rest are pro-German? What’d it look like in Germany?” “I get your point, Andy. It will seem to lean to the Allies by contrast.” “There you are! Well, what are we going to do?” “Play fair.” “Sure. But we can be cagey about it, can’t we?” “To what extent?” “Enough to live. I don’t want to see The Guardian mess up in a fight that’s none of our fight and get done up so bad that we can’t help win the fight that is our fight. Let England lick Germany. Our business is to play the game here at home and lick the corporation crowd for legislative control of the State. Don’t you think it’s going to be a cinch, either, just because we’ve elected Mart Embree Governor!” “Expediency is a queer text for you, Andy.” “I’m all for expediency as against idiocy.” “What about butting into the Wade riot?” “That was for a friend. War, right there under my nose. This other thing is four thousand miles away. And I hope it stays there!” “Andy,” propounded his chief, “what do you really think of the Governor?” “‘Smiling Mart’?” “Is that an answer?” “Ay-ah. I always wonder about one thing. If you brushed that smile off quick, what ’d be under it?” “He asked me to sit in his box at the convention meeting of the Federated German Societies.” “Oh, you got an invitation from the Societies, did you?” “Yes. Issued by Bausch as secretary.” “I bet he spit in the ink before he signed it. Going?” “What do you think?” “Sure.” “Expediency again, eh?” “Ay-ah. There’s no principle in turning down an invitation, even if it _will_ do us some good!” “All right, Andy. I’ll go,” laughed the editor. He sat in the Governor’s box at the meeting. There was the same pan-Germanic atmosphere that there had been two years before, but magnified. The Imperial banners were more flamboyant, more triumphant. The verve and swing of “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles,” was more martial; it defied the world. The speeches were more fiery, more challenging, more instinct with the fierce pride of a dominant nationalism; and again Jeremy felt resentfully, in the references to the adoptive republic, that tone of bland and intolerable condescension to a lesser people.