“True.  And now the spirit’s dead and the form’s left—­and what’s so absurd as a form that rattles dead bones?”

“Father didn’t feel as you do, Wayne.”

“He had no cause to.  He was needed.  But we don’t need the army on the frontier now.  That’s done.  And we do need the forest service—­the thing to build up.  There’s no use harking back to traditions.  The world moves on too fast for that.  Question is—­not what did you do yesterday—­but what good are you to-day—­what are you worth to-morrow?  Oh, I’m not condemning the army half so much as I’m sympathizing with it,” he laughed.  “It’s full of live men who want to be doing something—­instead of being compelled to argue that they’re some good.  They get very tired saying they’re useful.  They’d like to make it self-evident.”

“Well, perhaps we’ll have a war with Japan,” said Katie consolingly.

“Perhaps we will.  Having an army that’s spoiling for it, I don’t see how we can very well miss it.”

“But if we had no army we certainly should have a war.”

His silence led Katie to gasp:  “Wayne, are you becoming—­anti-militarist?”

He laughed.  “Oh, I don’t know what I’m becoming.  But as to myself—­I do know this.  There would be more satisfaction in constructive work than in work that constructs only that it may be ready to destroy.  I would find it more satisfying to help give my country itself—­through natural and legitimate means—­than stand ready to give it some corner of some other country.”

“But to keep the other country from getting a corner of it?”

“Doesn’t it occur to you, Katie, that as a matter of fact the other country might like a chance to develop its resources?  We’re like a crowd of boys with rocks in their hands and all afraid to throw down the rocks.  If one did, the others might be immensely relieved.  It seems rather absurd, standing there with rocks nobody wants to throw—­especially when there are so many other things to be doing—­and everybody saying, ‘I’ve got to keep mine because he’s got his.’  Would you call that a very intelligent gang of kids?  Ferguson says it’s the workingmen of the world will bring about disarmament.  That they’re coming to feel their common cause as workers too keenly to be forced into war with each other.”

“That’s what the man that mends the boats says,” piped up Worth.  “He says that when they’re all socialists there won’t be any wars—­’cause nobody’ll go.  But Watts says that day’ll never come, thank God.”

“Are you thanking God for yourself or for Watts, sonny?” laughed his father.  “And who, pray, is the man that mends the boats?”

“The man that mends the boats, father, is a man that’s ’most as smart as you are.”

“It has been a long time,” gravely remarked Wayne, “since any man has been brought to my attention so highly commended as that.”

But their talk had been sobering to them both, for they spoke seriously then of various things.  It was probable that before long Wayne would be ordered to Washington.  He wanted to know what Katie would do then.  Why not spend next season in Washington with him?  Just what were her plans?