The lieutenant went out and called the superintendent on the telephone. "Got young Waite here," he said. "He tried to tear the Pontchartrain up by the roots and Kerr had to drop the locust on him a bit. What'll I do wit' the kid?" "Hurt?" "Didn't improve him none." "Drunk?" "So-so." "Send somebody over to the Tuller with him and have him put to bed." It was not for the public to know that the superintendent had two sons who were employed in the Waite Motor Car Company's plant--for whom he desired fair prospects and promotion. So Potter slept in an excellent hotel bedroom instead of a cell. He awakened in the morning with a head that was very sore; dressed and went down to the office. "Your car is out front," said the clerk. Even that detail had been attended to by a solicitous police force. At breakfast he read a paper on whose first page he divided honors with the _Lusitania_. He was not interested in what was said about himself; at first he was not especially interested in what was said about the _Lusitania_, but as he read his interest grew, changing to hot anger as he read the still incomplete list of the dead. More than one individual was there named with whom Potter had broken bread. Even in the editorial there was no demand for war; there was astonishment, there was wrath, but it seemed to Potter there was some effort to find an excuse for Germany's act.... Passengers warned.... Munitions.... Possibility of internal explosion.... Wait for particulars. The attitude of the paper was not quite his father's attitude, not so frank, but he was able to see it was his father's attitude disguised for popular consumption. And he was intelligent enough to realize that the finger of that paper was on the public pulse; that, without doubt, the paper was dealing with the situation as the public wanted it dealt with--a public not willing to resent blow with blow. At the next table a man was saying, "Just because they've killed a thousand or so is no reason for us to get into it. War would mean killing another hundred thousand or maybe half a million. Because they've killed a thousand, should we let them kill a hundred times as many more? That's _sense_.... Make 'em pay for it...." "What could we do, anyhow?" asked the other. "Might get in with our navy, but there isn't anything for a navy to do. Couldn't send an army across three thousand miles of ocean." "Right. I'm for the Allies, but my idea is we can help a lot more by staying neutral and sending 'em all the munitions they want." "My idea exactly," agreed the other. That was it. What could we do? We had no army. Potter had been told that Uruguay had more artillery than the United States. There was no ammunition!... The United States was ready for peace, and the old absurdity about a million squirrel-shooters was gospel in the minds of a hundred millions of people. A million squirrel-shooters armed with what?