I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 23
SINCE I wrote the beginning of this there has come the war in Europe: a war full of suffering brave women and dead children: full of German greed and cruelty and stupidity and of French gameness and cheerfulness, French splendor of valor.
It has an effect of some kind on each person who reads so much as its 'headlines.'
It has the effect on me of making me a jealously patriotic American.
It makes me think of Lexington and Gettysburg with an odd furious personal shame.
We are Americans not by accident but by the blood of dead Americans. But we assume it is by accident.
We lie down like a nation of bastards to let the pig-hearted Hun trample by proxy on our neck.
It was for America to declare war in the same hour the Lusitania passengers met murder.
We were not 'too proud' but afraid. Afraid and not ready.
Not ready has no right thing to do with it.
They were not ready at Lexington.
I long with some passion to exchange my two black dresses for two white ones with red crosses on the sleeves: to serve my country in a day of death and honor.
It too is all the time under my skin though I write along but in this flawed song of myself.