But the machinery which Ralph applauded, and in which Sabinsport certainly wanted to trust, did not work smoothly. Again and again the pledges on which we rested were violated; and then, in the spring of 1916, when the town's heart was still big with anxiety over the fate of Paris, came the sinking of the _Sussex_, and the cynical declaration of one of the German leaders in frightfulness that henceforth there should be "unlimited, unchecked, indiscriminate torpedoing, directed against every nationality and every kind of ship." Germany yielded at the prompt threat of the United States to break with her. She yielded, promised all we asked--reparation, right of search, faithful attention to the laws of the sea as they had been at the coming of war. But Dick had felt at the time that Sabinsport, as a whole, would have been much better satisfied if the victory over Germany in the matter of the _Sussex_ had been a victory of guns rather than of notes. Certainly Uncle Billy and Patsy and those who followed them felt so, and said so--Patsy with such insistence that Ralph who, throughout the spring had been honestly trying to cultivate control in her company, broke out hotly one day: "You ought to be proud of our victory," he declared; "a victory of civilized methods instead of barbarous ones, but to hear you talk one wouldn't dream that you had ever heard of it. Why, Patsy, we're the only nation that has won a victory over Germany since the war began. We've made her give up the very weapons on which she counted most, and we've done it without a soldier or a gun." "A victory!" sniffed Patsy; "you'll see she's given in because the English were getting ahead of her. She'll come back to it again. She lies. Wasn't I in Belgium when--" "Good Lord, Patsy, can't you ever for a moment forget Belgium? You don't know yet, nor does any one, the real provocation the Germans had." At which Patsy, white with rage, left the room, but only to talk more and more vehemently, while Ralph the next day published an editorial in the _Argus_ which was long remembered. He called it "The Unpopularity of Civilization." In the course of it he said: "How small a place civilization has in the hearts and understandings of vociferous America has been most vividly and interestingly demonstrated in recent weeks. As an exhibit of its unpopularity, the reception the settlement of our struggle with Germany has met surpasses anything that I remember in our history. We were and had been for a year in a critical case. We had undertaken to force a great power to admit that she was violating international law, and to exact from her a promise to obey it.