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Lawyer: Major, Military Intelligence, Washington.
Lawyer: Member Special Commission to Russia.

Vice-President of

executive in Paris.

Trust Company: Red Cross

Capitalist: Y. M. C. A. executive in Paris.

Editor: Allied War Relief in Paris.

Manufacturer: Member of War Industries Board,
Washington.

Dealer in Railroad Supplies: Gone to Russia on business
for United States Government.

Lawyer: Executive in Food Administration, Chicago.
Stock Broker: Major, Ordnance Department, France.
Lawyer: Lieutenant-Colonel, National Army, Fort
Myer.

Of the twenty there were only eight remaining in New York! Now it may well be that, had I extended my list to a hundred names I would have found only a few additional absentees. I do not know. What struck me was that of the twenty men I most wanted to see on my return to New York, a majority had offered their services to their country in spite of the fact that they were all above military age, all prominent in affairs, most of them earning large salaries. They had abandoned their careers gladly without, apparently, a moment's hesitation, simply because they thought it was the thing to do. It didn't, and it doesn't, seem to me particularly important to know what proportion of one's entire acquaintance are responding to the call of duty; but it is important to know what proportion of the twenty men one regards as most worth while are doing so. If I had confined

myself to the first ten names, I should have found only three of my friends who were not working for the government.

There was nothing doing in the office and I put on my hat and went out into the street again. As I looked back at our front windows I observed for the first time that we had a small service-flag of our own with three blue stars on it. Somehow it gave me a feeling of encouragement. I wondered if everybody's business was as hard hit as my own.

The streets seemed to be just as crowded as ever with people hurrying along about their manifold affairs. The only difference was in the amount of bunting displayed everywhere and the posters, some old and torn, and others fresh and new, that adorned every hoarding, wall, and empty barrel. Many of them were artistic and their legends inspiring. Side by side with posters upon which were displayed the Stars and Stripes were others with the Union Jack and the banner of St. George calling upon all loyal Englishmen and Canadians in the United States to enlist under their own flag: "Britishers-Enlist to-day!" "British blood calls British blood! Sons of Britain join your army here enlist now!"

One poster especially gripped my imagination-the figure of a marine in khaki, one foot advanced, standing in front of the flag, his left fist clinched and in his right a pistol, with a look of dogged determination

upon his bronzed face. "First in the Fight-Always Faithful!" Two other posters showed our boys in khaki charging up a hill, bearing the flag, and another a group, similar to that in the familiar painting, inscribed "Spirit of 1917." That was it! The Spirit of 1917! I had been accustomed to growl at English stupidity and bad manners, to scoff at French laxity and frivolity; now the sight of French and English uniforms among the crowd and the French and English colors juxtaposed with my own sent a fine glow through my veins. This was a new world I had come back into! A bigger world-a world of the spirit—the spirit of 1917! My blood tingled at the thought that even if I wasn't going to be among the first to fight for freedom, Jack was! I was exalted by a patriotic fervor stimulated by these flags and posters. I yearned to go and do something myself— right off-"now"-"to-day"-not at a desk in some administrative building but with a rifle over my shoulder, the smell of powder in the air, and my feet on the muddy turf.

Then I gloomily realized that if my heart were young, my arteries were old! Nevertheless, I assured myself, they were not so old as Joffre's by nearly twenty years! Or Cadorna's! As far as fitness went I believed that I was perfectly sound-the only difference was that under a prolonged strain I wouldn't last as long probably as a younger chap-a purely theoreti

cal limitation. To every intent and purpose I was as vigorous as my son. After all, I was really a young man. I had climbed Fusiama only eight months before, had tramped for days through the Philippines and the Islas Adjacentes, and every year of the last ten I had hunted either Rocky Mountain sheep or elk among the Shoshones. I was as hard as nails, unaddicted in excess to alcohol or tobacco, could carry a sixty-pound pack for hours along a New Brunswick portage or tote my half of a canoe with any FrenchCanadian voyageur. No, I was all right! Yet, here I was wandering around Wall Street!

It was almost with relief-a sensation of needed vindication-that I found myself being warmly shaken by the hand by Arthur Pulham, a stock-brokering friend of mine with offices on the ground floor of a Broad Street building. He is a big, husky chap about forty-three years old, with pink cheeks, weighs nearly two hundred pounds, and has shoulders like Samson's. He spends his summers sailing a racing-yacht on Narragansett Bay and always goes tarpon-fishing in the spring-a crank about outdoor life, with a keen sense of the value of money-who, in spite of a curious pantheistic materialism, had a lot of good points, and whom I could count on in trouble as a friend.

"Well! Well! John!" he cried heartily. "You back! I am glad to see you! Tell me all about yourself! How is Helen? And the boy? Oh, of course,

he'd be with the colors! Great luck for the lad, eh? Wish I was his age! Come around to the office and smoke a cigar?"

I was glad to see him and, having nothing to do, followed him into the customer's room, which was filled with a heterogeneous crowd lounging in chairs in front of a quotation-board. The market was active and depressed and prices were changing with great rapidity. Pulham pushed me into his private office and pulled to the door. Then he shoved toward me a box of expensive cigars, helped himself to one, lighted it, and leaned back comfortably in his armchair.

"Well, old man!" he repeated. "I sure am glad to see you once more! How do you find business?" "Isn't any," I answered, smiling. "But from the look of things outside there you don't seem to be troubled that way."

He took a satisfied pull on his cigar.

"No," he said, "business is pretty good! Pretty, pretty good!" He leaned toward me confidentially. "You see," he imparted to me with a tremor of egotism which he could not conceal, "I doped this all out nearly two years ago. In the first place, all my people got in on the 'War Babies'-Bethlehem Steel, Crucible, General Motors, and so on-and then I had a hunch that, whether the war lasted much longer or not, there would be some bad times and I told every

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