Читать книгу An Affair of State онлайн

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"The League is finished, I'm afraid," said Mr. Locke.

"It's certainly finished unless the President is able to continue his speaking tour."

Mr. Locke shook his head. "It seems that our people are aroused and united only when they are immediately threatened. You take away their food, or their jobs, or put fear of sudden death into them--then they are aroused. But this League seems to them a faraway thing. It's like joining a lodge in another city. They don't see any quick benefit. They don't see how it can help them personally."

"But certainly they must think of their children."

"They don't think of their children. Only one generation in ten considers its children, and we had that generation in the last half of the Eighteenth Century. Anyway, Wilson's speaking tour will have to be cancelled. He can't possibly go on."

"It's a shame."

Mr. Locke sat down in his swivel chair and looked out of the wide window, over the White House, and over the Capitol beyond, so that the warm autumn sun was full on his face. "Poor Wilson," he said. "Poor, idealistic Wilson. What was it Jefferson said? It went something like this, 'The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.'"