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just tossed it away like that when something bigger came along? Then it occurred to me that, war or no war, there were bigger things coming along all the time. Get me? It's fine to drive the boches out of Belgium, but it would be fine, too, to drive poverty and crime and disease out of America! It was an absolutely new idea to me. Yet John D. has had it all the time! Give the old man his due. And little John, too! And if it's worth throwing away your fortuneand your life, maybe-for one good cause, it's worth while throwing 'em away for another; see?"

I nodded. This was queer stuff for a Wall Street promoter to put across after a midday lunch at the club-stuff that was a little too abstract for my mood. Here was Rogers making plans for what he was going to do after the war-if he wasn't killed-while I-!

"That's a pretty fine idea, Rogers!" I agreed. "But no matter what they do hereafter I must say that it seems to me that the rich have done themselves proud so far in this war! They've given their sons and themselves and poured out their money like coal running down a chute without a quiver!"

"You bet!" he assented. "This war has rehabilitated the malefactor of great wealth. It's a funny thing. When I was a boy 'riches and honor' were more or less synonymous. But latterly in America the possessors of great fortunes have found them

selves more or less objects of suspicion. Ever since the insurance investigation and the good old muckraking days the millionaire has been under a cloud. If he gave away a couple of millions to a hospital or a college he was always charged with trying to buy an honorary degree or salve his conscience, and the directors of the institution he was trying to help were accused of receiving stolen goods. "Tainted money!' A million dollars, I guess, always carries a slight guilty feeling along with it! No one can earn a million dollars. I always felt that way about my promotion profits! That, I suppose, is the significance of the word fortune. Until recently the puzzle of the rich has been how to get rid of their money with honor. Now they've got their chance. They're taking advantage of it, too. They're unloading it on Uncle Sam -and Belgium-and France and Poland. They're all right!"

"Of course," I interjected, "the rich can afford to do it. They've got the money to give. And a lot of 'em won't miss it so very much at that!"

"True," he answered. "But they're giving it, aren't they? You don't belittle the act of the fireman who saves a woman because he happens to be a fireman and to have the ladder. The rich were lucky to have the money. Let's give 'em credit for giving it away. I tell you this war is going to make the rich They had lost caste. They were

respectable again.

going down. It gave 'em a chance to get back. But apart from the giving of money, the rich haven't been behind the poor in offering to serve under the flag either. Oh, this war is doing a lot to wipe out the distrust of wealth. And the real underlying reason is that it's teaching the fellows who have made the money that it isn't of very much use to them unless they do something with it that's worth while for everybody else."

"There won't be much class feeling left when we get through, I fancy," I dared to assert. "With the poor man's boy and the capitalist's son fighting side by side they'll find out each other's good points and they'll remember them when they come back. The 'brotherhood of man' will mean something. It's the soldier's 'choice of honor rather than life' that will make them all gentlemen together, and they won't stand for seeing the ideals they bled for going by the board. They'll fight for them at home, just as they did in France!"

"What you say about the 'choice of honor rather than life' is very true," he returned thoughtfully. "What a wonderful thing it is that every man of us has the same opportunity for the supreme sacrifice! The same great prize-the same immortal glory! It makes no difference whether a fellow has made a success or failure of his life up to this time, he has the same chance as anybody else to give all he's got.

And nobody can give more. He's the equal in that respect of the greatest genius or statesman in the land! If you asked me who were the happiest men around to-day I should unhesitatingly reply, 'the failures.' This war is the opportunity of the unsuccessful. No matter how much a man may have foozled his life, he can retrieve himself by a single act—in the twinkling of an eye. When a chap dies out on No Man's Land nobody is going to ask whether he made money or not before the war. They won't inquire whether he lived well or ill. Whatever his past may have been, he will have atoned for all his sins."

He took a long breath surcharged with tobacco.

"The other evening at the club I happened to ask after half a dozen rather notorious 'ne'er-do-wells' of my acquaintance, and learned that every one was, or had been, at the front. One was chasing submarines in the North Sea in command of his own converted yacht-in danger every moment of being torpedoed— two others, men of over fifty, were driving ambulances on the firing-line, three had joined the Lafayette Escadrille and were risking their lives daily in the air, and the last-Thompson-had died at the head of his men leading a charge at Neuve Chapelle.

"Poor old Thompson!' I said.

"Lucky old Thompson, you mean!' retorted the fellow I was talking with. There were bitter tears in

his eyes. 'I was going with him-only-dammitmy bad heart threw me out!""

As I threaded my way through the crowd back to the office I realized the truth of what Rogers had said. This was the salvation of the failure.

How many fellows we have known who in another age might have risen to supreme heights, through strength or bravery, but who for one reason or another didn't fit into the scheme of modern life! Either they have plodded dumbly along, making failure after failure in business or at the professions, or have hung about doing nothing, if not actually engaged in dissipation. They had no place on a city pavement between rows of brown-stone dwellings. Theirs was the realm of sea and sky-gentlemen adventurers, buccaneers-cavemen, if you choose. Now they have come into their own. They have found themselves. They can follow the gleam over the "uttermost purple rim." They can challenge the rest of mankind in bravery. Good luck to them!

So, likewise, the war has opened the eyes of the successful man. It has suddenly jarred him into the realization that after twenty or thirty years of toiling he has really no more to offer his country than his totally unsuccessful brother. He is up against the eternal verities. Once he has on khaki and faces the probability that at the same time next year he will be

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