Ben, the elder of the two, was sixteen, and just ready for college; but he could not give four precious years to an academic degree.  He went to work.  With the background of an educated environment and a very sound knowledge of economic questions, breathed in from his earliest days, he found a place at once on a new paper—­or, rather, on an old paper just being converted into a new organ of liberalism—­Liberty.  It was independent in politics, and was supposed to be independent in economic questions, but by the time Ben worked up to the editorship it was well recognized to be an anticapitalist sheet.  The salary of its editor, though not large, was sufficient to enable him to send his younger brother through college, with the result that David, a little weak, a little self-indulgent, a little—­partly through physical causes—­disinclined to effort, was now a poet, a classicist and an instructor in a fresh-water college.  Ben made him an allowance to enable him to live—­the college not thinking this necessary for its instructors.  But during the war Ben had not been able to manage the allowance, because, to the surprise of many of his friends, Ben had volunteered early.

Although the reasons for doing this seemed absurdly simple to him, the decision had been a difficult one.  He was a pacifist—­saw no virtue in war whatsoever.  He wished to convert others to his opinion—­unlike many reformers who prefer to discuss questions only with those who already agree with them.  He argued that the speeches of a man who had been through war, or, better still, the posthumous writings of one who has been killed in war, would have more weight with the public than the best logic of one who had held aloof.  But his radical friends felt that he was using this argument merely as an excuse for choosing the easy path of conformity, while the few ultraconservatives who mentioned the matter at all assumed that he had been drafted against his will.  Afterward, when the war was over and his terrible book, War, appeared, no one was pleased, for the excellent reason that it was published at a moment when the whole world wanted to forget war entirely.  The pay of a private, however, had not allowed him to continue David’s allowance, and so David, displaying unusual energy, had found a job for himself as tutor for the summer to William Cord’s son.  Ben had not quite approved of a life that seemed to him slightly parasitical, but it was healthy and quiet and, above everything, David had found it for himself, and initiative was so rare in the younger man that Ben could not bear to crush it with disapproval.

Increasingly, during the two years he was in France, Ben was displeased by David’s letters.  The Cords were described as kindly, well-educated people, fond one of another, considerate of the tutor, with old-fashioned traditions of American liberties.  Ben asked himself if he would have been better pleased if David’s employers had been cruel, vulgar, and blatant, and found the answer was in the affirmative.  It would, he thought, have been a good deal safer for David’s integrity if he had not been so comfortable.