But Bernstorff and Dumba and Boy-Ed had not been without their value, as Plattsburg had not been without its value. Preparedness was in the air. It was a topic of conversation. It and the blind atrocity of the slaughter of Edith Cavell.... The President's message in December dealt with preparedness, naval and military, and promised much. Mr. Garrison had a plan.... The inert mass of the people was no longer inert; it stirred, moved, but did not awaken. Perhaps it was vexed by nightmare visitations.... Henry Ford's heart made his head ridiculous with the squabbling argosy aboard his peace ship.... All these things were straws indicating not only the rising of the wind, but the direction of the wind.... Potter Waite studied and appraised them at their true value. He studied and weighed the manifestations of public consciousness in Detroit, smug, wealthy, inaccessible Detroit. Detroit was on no exposed coast; Detroit was safe from invasion; Detroit did not share the fears and the excitement of the seaboard, but went on its way manufacturing motor-cars and munitions, stoves and varnish, and piling up its wealth fantastically, spending its wealth but never able to exhaust its income. Submarine sinkings were academic affairs in Detroit; bomb plots, the incitement of labor to violent unrest, the torch of the plotter, were matters that affected her more nearly. There were those in high places who knew that the stealthy eye of Germany's army of moles was on the city; that they tunneled underneath the city's feet, sinister, frightful.... But Detroit did not cry for war. She demanded protection in her activities. Her German-Americans were loud in their talk. The hyphen had its definite place among them. Potter watched and saw. Like the East, the Middle-West was moving glacier-like toward a distant point. The moment would come when glacier movement became avalanche rush. Detroit continued to fly high. Long before the new year Potter had discarded casts, bandages, crutches; his body was as sound as ever it had been, more perfectly fit than his habits had allowed it to be for years. There had been other changes for the better--changes less easy to detect and to define. One might almost have been justified in saying that he had not gotten well of his injuries, but had been recreated. There is a spiritual rebirth which need not of necessity have anything to do with so-called morals. Any changes apparent in Potter were not due to his taking thought of moral considerations. The only change of heart he had known was with respect to his country: indifference had turned to devotion. The great alteration was that he had acquired an object in life; everything else flowed out of that.