And at such times they were
grave, but not ungentle.
For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward
seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, like
the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach
the ear as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under
one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came to an end after the
torpedoing of the _Sussex_; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in
Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and people said, "This means
peace for America, and all is well for us," but everybody knew in his
heart that nothing was well for us, that there was no peace.
They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never
ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it and it
became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay
those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would
defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning of it--Life,
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and theirs to defend.
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