|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Straight Deal by Owen Wister: Only they've been getting worse while the rest of the world's been
getting better. Get your facts straight, man."
A number of us were now listening to this, and I envied the historian his
ingenious promptness--I have none--and I hoped for more of this timely
debate. But debate was over. The anti-Englishman faded to silence. Either
he was out of facts to get straight, or lacked what is so pithily termed
"come-back." The latter, I incline to think; for come-back needs no
facts, it is a self-feeder, and its entire absence in the anti-Englishman
looks as if he had been a German. Germans do not come back when it goes
against them, they bleat "Kamerad!"--or disappear. Perhaps this man was a
spy--a poor one, to be sure--yet doing his best for his Kaiser: slinking
|
