still, still what . 4 . if we are all to blame
“Why haven’t you enlisted, Mr. Vane?”
He took a deep breath. Once more — but this time was the climax — once more he would try to reveal all his splendid thoughts; all those flaming thoughts which, if he could but express them, would abolish war forever — unless, indeed, the world was peopled by deaf lunatics. What he said, fixing her with his eye, was this:
“I haven’t enlisted because — I haven’t enlisted — that is — — You see, to put it in a nutshell, it is a question of might versus right — — Does right make might? Does might, I mean, mate mike? Does mike mate — —“ He paused, wiped his brow, then ended desperately: “Oh, if I could make the world realize what war is! But I can’t. Men laugh at what I say. Editors send back what I write. Nobody reads my pamphlets.”
“Still,” she said, “still —
“Still what?” said he.
“Who,” she said, frowning, “is to blame that war still exists?”
“We are all to blame,” he answered. “We are all to blame for consenting to be ruled by men so stupid that they could ever dream of the possibility of war.”
She lifted her champagne glass. She put her lips delicately to the cold, clear wine. Then she held the wine bubbles in her mouth in order to hear, before she swallowed them, the little, murmuring sound they made, like tiny waves on a pebbly beach far away.
“If we are all to blame,” she said, “we should all bear the burden.”
And she rose, the other women rose with her, the yellow kid flew to open the door, and the men were left alone with their tobacco and liqueurs and coffee.
Van stared straight before him solemnly. It was true. All were to blame. Then all should fight.
—
ex W. B. Trites, “The Slacker” in The Saturday Evening Post 188:24 (December 11, 1915) : 13-16, 49-50, 53-54, 57-58 (15)
U Minnesota copy/scan (via google books) : link
same (U Minnesota copy/scan, via hathitrust) : link
U Illinois at Urbana-Champaign copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
In the end, Hubert Vane goes to war as a volunteer stretcher bearer; is wounded (shrapnel). Antonia de la Torre goes to meet and marry her hero.
—
Illustrated by Harvey Dunn (1884-1952)
wikipedia : link
see the remarkable Smithsonian survey, Picturing World War I : America’s First Official War Artists, 1918-1919
specifically the page devoted to Harvey Thomas Dunn (1884-1952) : link
Trites’s story “The Slacker” is a precursor, if not early draft, of the later novel A Modern Girl (1929). That connection, and more, is taken up in a writings by and about page for W. B. Trites, 2631a.