Page:The Marne (Wharton 1918).djvu/55

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THE MARNE
47

him and imitated him. It had become the fashion to have a collection of war-trophies from the battlefields. The boys' sisters were "adopting war-orphans" at long distance, and when Troy went home for the holidays he heard more and more talk of war-charities, and noticed that the funds collected were no longer raised by dancing and fancy-balls. People who used the war as an opportunity to have fun were beginning to be treated almost as coldly as the pacifists.

But the two great factors in the national change of feeling were the Lusitania and the training-camps.

The Lusitania showed America what the Germans were, Plattsburg tried to show her the only way of dealing with them.

Both events called forth a great deal of agitated discussion, for if they focussed the popular feeling for war, they also