Naturally, it was about the war. From the war we passed to the attitude of the United States toward the struggle; and from that what could I do but glide to the topics as to which I felt myself a mouthpiece for Larry Strangways? It was a chance. Here were two men obviously of some influence in the country, and neither of them of very strong convictions, so far as I could judge, on any subject but that of floating foreign bonds. As the dust from a butterfly's wing might turn the scale with one or both of them, I endeavored to throw at least that much weight on the side of a British and American entente. At something I said, Mr. Russky, with the slightest hint of a Yiddish pronunciation, complained that I spoke as if all Americans were "Anglo-Zaxons"; whereas it was well known that the "Anglo-Zaxon" element among them was but a percentage, which was destined to grow less. "I'm not putting it on that ground," I argued, with some zeal, taking up a point as to which one of Larry Strangways's letters had enlightened me. "I see well enough that the American ideal isn't one of nationality, but of principle. When the federation of the States was completed it was on the basis not of a common Anglo-Saxon origin, but on that of the essential unity of mankind. Mere nationality was left out of the question. All nations were welcomed, with the idea of welding them into one." "And England," Mr. Russky declared, somewhat more loudly than was necessary for my hearing him, "is still bound up in her Anglo-Zaxondon." "Not a bit of it!" I returned. "Her spirit is exactly the same as that of this country. Except this country, where is there any other of which the gates and ports and homes and factories have been open to all nations as hers have been? They've landed on her shores in thousands and thousands, without passports and without restraint, welcomed and protected even when they've been taking the bread out of the born Englishman's mouth. Look at the number of foreigners they've been obliged to round up since the war began--for the simple reason that they'd become so many as to be a peril. It's the same not only in the British Islands, but in every part of the British Empire. Always the same reception for all, with liberty for all. My own country, in proportion to its population, is as full of citizens of foreign birth as this is. They've been fathered and mothered from the minute they landed at Halifax. Poles and Ruthenians and Slovaks and Icelanders have been given the same advantages as ourselves. I'm not boasting of this, Mr. Russky. I'm only saying that, though we've never defined the principle in a constitution, our instinct toward mankind is the same as yours." It was here Mr. Thorne broke in, saying that sympathy in the United States was all for France.