“But when you try to do it from several points of view—correlating them?”
“Even then—” She paused, reflecting, shaking her head as she went on
again, as if to shake away a consciousness of the impossible. “I don’t
try. There’s no use in trying. It’s so immense—so far beyond me. It’s
grown so, too. When it first began I could more or less compass it—or,
I thought I could. Now it’s become like nature—or God—or any of the
colossal infinite conceptions—it means different things to different
minds.”
“That is, we can only take of it what we take of the ocean—each a few
drops—no one able to take all?”
“Something like that. And we can only give a few drops—just what we’ve
got the measure to take up—some a little more, some a little less—but no
one more than a little as compared to the whole. That’s why I’m not going
to try to explain.”
“Then how are you going to make them understand?”
“I’ll tell them—I’ll do what I can to show them—that the greatest
movement of all time is going on—and America is taking no national part
in it. I’ll try to make them see that it isn’t just to avenge the few
American lives lost through the U-boats, or to free Belgium, or to put
down autocracy, or to do any one or two or three of the things that have
been set before us. It isn’t even the whole of them, just taken as so
many human motives.”
“But you’ll have to tell them what it is, won’t you? It won’t do just to
put before them what it isn’t.”
“But how can I? How can any one? It would be like trying to tell them
what nature is. It’s a universal composite, made up of everything; but
you couldn’t go about the country explaining it in lectures. The nearest
I could come to it would be in saying that it’s the great dramatic
conflict between good and evil to which human nature has been working up
ever since it committed its first sin; but the words in which to do that
have been so hard worked and are so terribly worn that they’ve become a
kind of ditty. It seems to me best just to talk to them simply—and let
them construct the monster out of the bones I lay before them. They’ll
do it. The public is not very quick, but when it gets going it’s pretty
instinctive.”
“Oh, then you’re going to tackle the public?”
“I’m going to tackle any one to whom I can get access.”
“You spoke just now of lectures.”
“I’ll speak of anything that will help me to get the message across.
That’s why I mention father and—” Again she hesitated at a name, going on
with an elision:—“first of all. They are simply the first I shall be able
to talk to. As a matter of fact, not many as yet have been over there
and come back to America—so that there’s a good deal of curiosity still
unsatisfied—and so one will get a chance. You must have noticed already
how dearly Americans, especially the women, like to be talked to. We’re
talked to so much by experts on all subjects that we should burst with
knowledge if our minds weren’t like those swimming-tanks with fresh water
running in and out of them all the time.”
“So you’re really going to make it a kind of business?”
She spread her hands apart, palms outward.
“What else can I do? I assure you it isn’t any desire for publicity or
that sort of thing. I’m just—I’m just driven on. It’s like what some
one says in the Bible—I’ve taken to reading the Bible lately—it seems
the only thing big enough in spirit to go with the big times—but some
one says there: ‘Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel!’ Well, it’s
the same way with me. Woe unto me if I don’t do this thing! It’s taken
possession of me; I can’t do anything else; and so I’m going back—”
I was expressing but one of the host of thoughts that crowded on me as I
said: “You’ve got the tremendous advantage of being an American. You can
say what you like. If I were—”
She stood off and surveyed me. “You don’t need to say anything. You speak
for yourself. One has only to look at you.”