Parker?" Don Miguel queried naively.
"Love of country, devotion to the ideals of liberty and democracy,"
Parker replied promptly, just as his daughter joined them.
Farrel rose and surrendered to her his chair, then seated himself on
the edge of the porch with his legs dangling over into a flower-bed.
His face was grave, but in his black eyes there lurked the glint of
polite contempt.
"Did you hear the question and the answer, Miss Parker?" he queried.
She nodded brightly.
"Do you agree with your father's premise?" he pursued.
"Yes, I do, Don Mike."
"I do not. The mucilage in our body politic is the press-agent, the
advertising specialist, and astute propagandist. I wonder if you know
that, when we declared war against Germany, the reason was not to make
the world safe for democracy, for there are only two real reasons why
wars are fought. One is greed and the other self-protection. Thank
God, we have never been greedy or jealous of the prosperity of a
neighbor. National aggrandizement is not one of our ambitions."
Kay stared at him in frank amazement.
"Then you mean that we entered the late war purely as a protective
measure?"
"That's why I enlisted. As an American citizen, I was unutterably
weary of having our hand crowded and our elbow joggled. I saw very
clearly that, unless we interfered, Germany was going to dominate the
world, which would make it very uncomfortable and expensive for us.
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