The passage vividly portrays widespread feelings of vulnerability before the terrifying new techniques and technologies of the Great War, which many Americans identified with Germany. The delayed entrance of the United States into the war led Wharton's impatient friend and fellow expatriate, Henry James, in his last year, to become a British citizen, an" apostasy" that at first shocked even other long-time fellow emigres like painter John Singer Sargent'but that carried in its wake even their-maybe especially their-bitter understanding. Wharton shared James's perspective, though not his choice, believing that Americans should" make every sacrifice to atone for the cowardice of their government." 2 She implored Robert Grant, a Boston jurist and fellow novelist, to" proclaim everywhere... what it will mean to all that we Americans cherish if England & France go under, & Prussianism becomes the law of life," 3 and assuring him that" all the wild rumours of'atrocities' are true, & are understated." 4 In A Son at the Front, sympathetically portrayed characters exclaim that" this isn't war-it's simple murder!" and that" Germany was conducting it on methods that civilization had made men forget"; one of them even calls" Germans not fit to live with white people"(90, 92, 133). All of this is