n doing useful relief work under Mr. Hoover, but the
confusion of his own feelings had checked him and brought him back.

Mr. Direck's mind was in a perplexity only too common during the
stresses of that tragic year. He was entangled in a paradox; like a
large majority of Americans at that time his feelings were quite
definitely pro-Ally, and like so many in that majority he had a very
clear conviction that it would be wrong and impossible for the United
States to take part in the war. His sympathies were intensely with the
Dower House and its dependent cottage; he would have wept with generous
emotion to see the Stars and Stripes interwoven with the three other
great banners of red, white and blue that led the world against German
imperialism and militarism, but for all that his mind would not march to
that tune. Against all these impulses fought something very fundamental
in Mr. Direck's composition, a preconception of America that had grown
almost insensibly in his mind, the idea of America as a polity aloof
from the Old World system, as a fresh start for humanity, as something
altogether too fine and precious to be dragged into even the noblest of
European conflicts. America was to be the beginning of the fusion of
mankind, neither German nor British nor French nor in any way national.
She was to be the great experiment in peace and reasonableness. She had
to hold civilisation and social order out of this fray, to be a refuge
for all those finer things that die under stress and turmoil; it was her
task to maintain the standards of life and the claims of humanitarianism
in the conquered province and the prisoners' compound, she had to be
the healer and arbitrator, the remonstrance and not the smiting hand.
Surely there were enough smiting hands.

But this idea of an America judicial, remonstrating, and aloof, led him
to a conclusion that scandalised him. If America will not, and should
not use force in the ends of justice, he argued, then America has no
right to make and export munitions of war. She must not trade in what
she disavows. He had a quite exaggerated idea of the amount of munitions
that America was sending to the Allies, he was inclined to believe that
they were entirely dependent upon their transatlantic supplies, and so
he found himself persuaded that the victory of the Allies and the honour
of America were incompatible things. And--in spite of his ethical
aloofness--he loved the Allies. He wanted them