"It's getting us," Ralph said, again and again. "It's getting us." And it was getting them. Dick, who at times watched almost breathless with desire that Sabinsport should understand, and who again and again groaned, "God! how slow she is to see it," began to take heart. So deeply was the town engaged in thought and feeling that not even the coming of a war of her own detached her interest. Indeed, it was a little difficult for her to take the trouble with Mexico very seriously, not being able to stretch her imagination to the point where Mexico could be anything more serious to the United States than a nuisance. Yet it did make a difference in things. When the call came in June a hundred men and boys suddenly appeared in khaki on the streets, making for the rendezvous. They came from the towns and surrounding country, and passed through the town so quietly and swiftly that Sabinsport gasped with amazement. She had not realized that she and the neighborhood had soldiers. It disturbed things some. A thriving little grocery closed its doors because the young proprietor was among the called. His wife with her baby went home to her father and mother. It was hard; but all she said was, "It's war." Dick started when they repeated the incident to him. "That was what returning Americans never ceased to marvel at in French and Belgian women--their quiet answer to every hardship, every sorrow--'_C'est la guerre_.'" That was what had amazed Patsy at Namur. And here was a commonplace little woman in this land, which the returning Americans always insisted was utterly lost in selfishness and cowardice, giving up her home and all her dawning hopes, with the same simple, "It's war." Was war one of the universal facts accepted by simple people, to whom life is all reality and almost nothing of speculation and theory? Was it something they knew by instinct to be one of the inevitable tragedies of human existence, like sickness and death, storms and pests? Did all natural people take war this way, neither revolting nor lamenting? Could it be that Americans, trained to despise and hate war as a lower form of energy, an appeal only for those people who were ruled by tyrants and forbidden to express their will, to use their brains and self-control in finding peaceful conclusions for all misunderstandings--could it be that they, too, accepted it with this simple, "It is war"?