By examining William Dean Howell's book, "Editha", the paper shows that the battle between George and Editha over whether
the Spanish-American war is immoral and should be opposed or is moral and worthy of support is a study of realism and idealism, respectively. The paper shows that by using Editha to demonstrate the beliefs of the American
government, the narrator fuses the more "
foolish" point of view, idealism, to the "weaker" sex, females, and shows that the American government's idealistic approach to war is "foolish."