I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have a contempt for men who do. And I… — Jack Finney

“Si, a lot of men make far greater sacrifices than he will. For the good of the country.”

“But he wouldn’t even be consulted about it!”

“Neither are they; they’re drafted into the army.”

“Well, maybe they should be asked, too.”

He genuinely didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe it’s wrong to force a man to join an army and kill other people against his own wishes.”

They just looked at me. What I was saying was really incomprehensible to them.

“You just think about supporting a wife and children on a dollar and ninety cents a day. Most of us work on Sundays; poor people can’t afford to rest on the Sabbath in a great city like this. Sometimes when I do have a Sunday off I go to church and take my wife and the children. It seems respectable, somehow, to go. And then the minister gets up and talks about the gratitude we ought to feel to God for all the blessings he gives us, and how thankful we ought to be that we live through his mercy. It may be very true as far as he is concerned, but I often think—and I don’t mean to be ungrateful or irreverent—that most people in this world have very little to be thankful for, and very little reason to thank God for life at all. Nine tenths of the people in New York find scarcely a moment in their lives which they can call their own, and see mighty little but misery from one year’s end to the other.”

“Sounds impressive. And expensive.”

“Not at all.” Danziger shook his head firmly. “It will cost, all told, only a little over three million dollars, less than the cost of two hours of war, and a better buy.”