"Well, they mustn't complain if we use stronger arguments. If they can't make good the neutrality they preach, we'll have to see what a little force will do." "What do you mean?" asked Otto, sharply. "You can't force the United States." "The hell we can't," was all his chief answered. The reply had made no deep impression on Otto then. He remembered it now. He remembered how this hint had recurred as he talked with the German agents in the different places where he had met them. After the Washington fiasco, bursting completely the party for which he had labored so faithfully, this threat came back to him more often. It made him anxious. It was in the back of his mind when he flared at Max and brought upon his head the taunt that humiliated and alarmed him. What if they carried it out--these explosions that they threatened--how could he escape complicity? He could refuse to help, but what good would that do if he was accused. It was a very unhappy young diplomat that laid his head on the pillow that night--one thoroughly disillusioned with great affairs. The succeeding months made him more unhappy. Sabinsport mistrusted him, and he was made to feel it. In the business life of the town where he had been treated with deference there was a withdrawal, hard to define but very real to Otto. Again and again when he entered an office or room men stopped talking. There was a restraint at the War Board--the one group in the town which had always listened with eagerness, whether to outlandish theories and gossip or to sensible argument and unquestioned fact. Why should the War Board harbor suspicions of him? Did the War Board _care_? Ralph, who had been his willing listener, was changed, it seemed to him. After the downfall of Labor's National Peace Council, he put the question bluntly to Otto: "Did you know that it was German money that was backing up the munition and pacifist campaign?" Otto hesitated. "Never mind," said Ralph, convinced, "but you must see that is a kind of thing not done, Otto. Embroiling us with England when we're trying to keep out of the scrap is the work of a sneak. You know why I threw the _Argus_ to the party. It was because I believed it an honest American effort to combat militarism in the United States, to stop the making and selling of munitions. Do you suppose I would have taken any stock in a German effort to stop munition making here? It's a scream--Germany spending money in such a cause while she's using Belgium's guns and running her factories night and day making munitions! I'm with you in any frank effort to make people understand Germany better. I begin to think, Otto, that this business makes me understand Germany better than anything that has happened. You may be sure I'll look twice hereafter at things made-in-Germany, particularly ideas. I don't like this business, Otto, and I have to say so."