“Something like that. And we can only give a few drops—just what we’ve got the measure to take up—some a little more, some a little less—but no one more than a little as compared to the whole. That’s why I’m not going to try to explain.” “Then how are you going to make them understand?” “I’ll tell them—I’ll do what I can to show them—that the greatest movement of all time is going on—and America is taking no national part in it. I’ll try to make them see that it isn’t just to avenge the few American lives lost through the U-boats, or to free Belgium, or to put down autocracy, or to do any one or two or three of the things that have been set before us. It isn’t even the whole of them, just taken as so many human motives.” “But you’ll have to tell them what it is, won’t you? It won’t do just to put before them what it isn’t.” “But how can I? How can any one? It would be like trying to tell them what nature is. It’s a universal composite, made up of everything; but you couldn’t go about the country explaining it in lectures. The nearest I could come to it would be in saying that it’s the great dramatic conflict between good and evil to which human nature has been working up ever since it committed its first sin; but the words in which to do that have been so hard worked and are so terribly worn that they’ve become a kind of ditty. It seems to me best just to talk to them simply—and let them construct the monster out of the bones I lay before them. They’ll do it. The public is not very quick, but when it gets going it’s pretty instinctive.” “Oh, then you’re going to tackle the public?” “I’m going to tackle any one to whom I can get access.” “You spoke just now of lectures.” “I’ll speak of anything that will help me to get the message across. That’s why I mention father and—” Again she hesitated at a name, going on with an elision:—“first of all. They are simply the first I shall be able to talk to. As a matter of fact, not many as yet have been over there and come back to America—so that there’s a good deal of curiosity still unsatisfied—and so one will get a chance. You must have noticed already how dearly Americans, especially the women, like to be talked to. We’re talked to so much by experts on all subjects that we should burst with knowledge if our minds weren’t like those swimming-tanks with fresh water running in and out of them all the time.” “So you’re really going to make it a kind of business?” She spread her hands apart, palms outward. “What else can I do? I assure you it isn’t any desire for publicity or that sort of thing. I’m just—I’m just driven on. It’s like what some one says in the Bible—I’ve taken to reading the Bible lately—it seems the only thing big enough in spirit to go with the big times—but some one says there: ‘Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ Well, it’s the same way with me. Woe unto me if I don’t do this thing! It’s taken possession of me; I can’t do anything else; and so I’m going back—”