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He paused and looked at his son again.

“Stacey,” he went on, “I sent you to school and college for nine years, and then for two years all over Europe, and then for three years to the Beaux Arts in Paris. It’s taken—how old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You don’t look it. It’s taken thirty careful years to educate you. You’re an expensive instrument ready for use. Are you going to throw all that away to do what some untrained laborer can do as well—no, better than you? Are all those years of training going to be to fit you for no other service than to—to stop a machine-gun bullet?”

“They ought not to be, father,” said the young man. “They wouldn’t be in a normal world. They were given me in a normal world for use in a normal world. But all of a sudden the normal world has been upset. It’s been wickedly assailed, wiped out for the moment, by the greatest crime in history. It’s up to every one of us to help bring it back. And all over Europe better men than I, men equally well educated, have given themselves freely—poets, painters, thinkers,—and trained business-men,” he added hastily.