in my mind to-day when I think of those German trophies in the park. The realistic imagination, which for a few bitter months brought these things home to comfortable people in America, will be slumbering again; and the young generation will fancy, as we did once on a time, that war is mainly an affair of flags and heroes and martial music."
"If you are not a pacifist," I said, "you sound remarkably like one. I don't see what you are driving at."
"You're mistaken," Thorpe replied, "I'm not arguing against war. That would be silly. Senator Lodge and General Wood and other idealists insist that we shall have war every little while always; and what such men insist upon is pretty likely to take place. I think, as they do, therefore, that we had better be prepared. Perhaps I believe ir an even more comprehensive plan of preparation than theirs. Since they are always talking of the ships and guns, I'm willing to trust them to provide that element. What interests me is that the country should be kept in a state of imaginative preparedness; that is, I want to be sure that it is ready to go in with a clear realistic preliminary vision of costs and consequences, such as never entered the heads, for example, of the military idealists
