Among the many things she thought of then
was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger.
The great country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable,
so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile
power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and
fundamental a thing could not be injured, a war for its defence had
appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last,
less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the
colossal German threat, and the shadow that touched this bright banner
of which the immigrants' children piped so briskly in the mission
club-room.
She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why,
or how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to
understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line
those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and
Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their
Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of
men made into armies.
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