So, through the five-hour ride the conversation ran.  Several times the talk drifted to politics and to the European War, but the politics discussed were local and lopsided, and the war was all too clearly regarded as something interesting but vague and remote.  On the entire journey not one word was spoken indicating that the people of this section had the least grasp on any national question, or that they were considering national questions, or that they realized what the war in Europe is about—­that it is a war for freedom and democracy, a war against war, a war to prevent a few individuals from ever again plunging the world into war.  Nor, though the day of our entry into the war was close at hand, had the idea that we might be forced to take part in the conflict so much as occurred to any of them.

They were not stupid people; on the contrary, some of them possessed a homely and picturesque philosophy; but they were not informed, and the reason they were not informed has to do with one of the chief needs of our rural population—­especially the rural population of the South.

What they need is good newspapers.  They need more world news and national news in place of county news and local briefs.  In the whole South, moreover, there is need for general political news instead of biased news written always from inside the Democratic party, and sandwiched in between patent medicine advertisements.

CHAPTER XLI

A MISSISSIPPI TOWN

It was dark when, after a journey of one hundred and twenty miles at the rate of twenty miles an hour, we reached Columbus, a city which was never intended to be a metropolis and which will never be one.

Columbus is situated upon a bluff on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, to the west of which is a very fertile lowland region, filled with plantations, the owners of which, a century ago, founded the town in order that their families might have churches, schools, and the advantages of social life.  As the town grew, a curious but entirely natural community spirit developed; when a gas plant, water works, or hotel was needed, prosperous citizens got together and financed the enterprise, not so much for profit as for mutual comfort.

In these ante bellum times the planters used to make annual journeys to Mobile and New Orleans, going by boat on the Tombigbee and taking their crops and their families with them.  After selling their cotton and enjoying themselves in the city, they would load supplies for the ensuing year upon river boats and return to Columbus, where the supplies were transferred to their vast attic storerooms.

Though their only water transportation was to the southward, they did not journey invariably in that direction, but sometimes made excursions to such fashionable watering places as the Virginia Springs, or Saratoga, to which they drove in their own carriages.