Still I was not without my moments of insight and amusement. I found that my friends and chance acquaintances, like those who talked in the parlor car, had one great grievance in common--the activities of agitators, Bolshevists, I.W.W.'s and all who are attacking American institutions. This touches them more nearly than international relations or any criticisms that come from abroad. And all of them dealt with the trouble in the same strain. They are not afraid of these wild men or of their wild ideas. But they are hurt and humiliated to find that people exist, especially within the borders of the United States, who believe the kind of nonsense that these people talk. Real Americans feel disgraced that news of that sort of discontent should be going out to the world. The attitude seems to be one of shame and indignation rather than of fear or anger. They were hurt to find that any one--especially any one who had come to America to live--could fail to see the manifold advantages of living under the Stars and Stripes. No one was afraid that the radicals could accomplish their ends--they were simply a noisy, irrational minority--but it was an insult to every American to have these people denying that the United States is the finest country in the world. It seemed incredible, stupefying. The man from Seattle on the observation car was able to give first-hand information about the I.W.W. and he proceeded to do so volubly and emphatically. He pinned his faith to the chastening influence of an accurately applied bludgeon in dealing with this element of society, and told with relish of how I.W.W. leaders were beaten up whenever they tried to start something. He established his claim to being a true American by stating that although living in the West he was born in Boston and was descended from one of the seven men who had established the town of Salem. He was all for direct action in dealing with the advocates of direct action. The sum of the matter is that the unrest is rousing American citizens to a keener sense of their heritage as descendants of the men who laid the foundations of the country, and they are inclined to be intolerant of any one who questions the soundness and essential rightness of American institutions. They have no patience with those who would overturn their system of government. The result will probably be a livelier sense of citizenship on the part of many who have been neglectful of their duties in the matter. They will not leave the conduct of affairs to those who cater to the forces of disruption. They are all for the America of their fathers, and this unrest will probably cause a rebirth of the old-fashioned American spirit. The danger is that a nation that has been roused to a sense of power by the war will act swiftly and intolerantly without discriminating sufficiently between those who would reform society and those who would wreck it. CHAPTER III BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE