Ralph struggled hopelessly against the flood, refusing to accept the collected opinion, the popular conclusions. Particularly did he refuse to join the condemnation of Germany. Let us understand Germany, was his constant plea. He was seeking to bolster the long-held faith that in the social developments of Germany lay the real hope of civilization. Their relation to German Kultur, he did not even dimly see. They were Kultur for him and all there was of it. Because Germany had worked out fine and practical systems of social insurance and industrial safety, and housing and employment, he could not believe her capable of other than humane and fair dealing with all the world. He was ready, for the sake of this faith, to explain away a great and growing mass of facts which to people of no such intellectual engagement were unanswerable. He found himself more and more at disagreement not only with Dick, his best friend, and the town, but with certain imperative, inner doubts that would not be quiet, and in this struggle he was getting little help from Dick. The war had quickly opened itself to Dick as something prodigious, murderous--all-inclusive. He saw the earth encircled by it--felt the inevitableness finally of the entrance of the United States. From the start it had been clear to him, as it could not have been to one who had not known the thought and passion of the German ruling class, that this must become the most desperate struggle the earth had yet seen between those who felt themselves fit and appointed to plan and rule in orderly fashion the lives of men and the blundering, groping mass fumbling at expression but forever indomitable in its determination to rule itself. Dick felt that he must get into it, the very thick of it, nothing but the limit--the direct, utter giving of himself--his body, his blood, would satisfy the passion that seized him. He would go to Canada and enlist. And with the determination there came a tormenting uncertainty. Would they accept him? All his life he had lived under a restraint--his guardian--physicians in almost every great center of the world had impressed it repeatedly upon him: "No great exertion, no great excitements. Nothing to fear with normal, steady living, everything from strain." His guardian had put it to him early: "This is a sporting proposition, Dick; you were born with this physical handicap. You can live a long, full, useful life without danger if you are willing to live within certain physical and mental limitations. Moderation, calm cheerfulness, courage; that will carry you through. It's a man's code, Dick. Make up your mind now and never forget the limits." Dick had done it easily--at the start. Restraint had become the habit of his life. Only now and then he felt a pang. Sports of the severe sort were closed to him. He went through Europe for years with the imperative call of the snow mountain in his soul and never answered it.