“I haven’t, Mr. Christian,” he declared, virtuously. “Then, Daisy, you’re the rarefied creature I said was an exception. Most of us have,” he went on when the roar of laughter subsided. “If we haven’t in one way we have in another. And what has been the result? Covetousness, hatred, class rivalry, capital and labor bitternesses, war. And now we’ve come to a place where by a queer and ironical judgment upon us the struggle for possession is going to take from us all that we possess.” He thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and spoke casually, confidentially. “For, boys, that’s what I’m coming to. All the good things we have are going to be taken away from us. Since we don’t know how to use them, and won’t learn, we’ve got to give them back.” “Oh, I don’t believe that, Mr. Christian,” a common-sense voice cried out in a tone of expostulation. “Peter, you’ll see. You’ll only have to live a few months longer to find yourself like every one else in America, lacking the simple essentials you’ve always taken as a matter of course. It isn’t luxuries alone that you’ll be called on to give up; it will be the common necessaries of every-day life. The great summons is coming to us, not merely from our government, not merely from the terrified and stricken nations of mankind, but from God above—to give everything back to Him. I don’t say that we shall starve or that we shall freeze; but we may easily be cold and hungry and driven to a cheese-paring economy we never expected to practise. The light will be taken from our lamps, the work from our fingers, the money from our pockets. We shall be searched to the very soul. There’s nothing we sha’n’t have to surrender. At the very least we must give tithes of all that we possess, signifying our willingness to give more.” “Some of us ’ain’t got nothing.” It was the bitter cry of the dispossessed. “Yes, Billy; we’ve all got life; and life, too, we shall have to offer up. There are some of you chaps sitting here that in all human probability will be called on to do it.” “You won’t, Mr. Christian. You’re too old.” “I’m too old, Spud, but my two boys are not; and they’re getting ready now. Whether it’s harder or easier to let them go rather than for me to go myself I leave to any of you guys that have kids.” “Perhaps it won’t be as bad as what you think.”