receiver on his name, who lives in a tower of inherited superiority and looks down at life through hazy distance with a telescope, has and can have no common sense. He is a good soldier, he knows the habits of the grouse and the stag, he can give an admirable dinner, he understands the principles of international law, but when international law turns into international anarchy he is not big enough to find the way of common sense through the emergency. He has not that intimate knowledge of human nature which comes only of a long and close contact with human, beings. Without that knowledge he will know no more of what is in the other fellow's mind and the bluff that covers it in a critical clash of wits than a baby sucking its bottle in a perambulator. He fails, and the cost of his failure no man can estimate. He stands discredited. As a public servant he is going into disuse and his going vindicates the judgment of our forefathers as to like holders of sense preferred.

"Now is the time when all men must choose between two ideals: Behold the common sense of Germany become the sense that is common only among criminals! The sooner we recognize that, the better. They are really burglars in this great house of God we inhabit, seeking to rob it of its best possessions—Hindenburglars! the proud and merciless heart on the one hand, that of the humble and contrite heart on the other; between the Hun and the Anglo-Saxon, between evil and good. Faced by such an issue I declare myself ready to lay all that I have or may have on the old altar of our common faith.

"My friend, be of good cheer. The God of our Fathers has not been Kaisered or Krupped or hurried in the least. There is no danger that Heaven will be Teutonized.

"The shouting and the tumult dies—The captains and the kings depart—! Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice.

"An humble and a contrite heart Lord God of hosts, be with us yet.

"Lest we forget—lest we forget

"Lest we forget the innumerable dead who have nobly died, and the host of the living who with a just and common sense and love of honor have sent them forth to die. Lest we forget that we and our allies have not been above reproach; that there were signs of decadence among us—in the growing love of ease and idleness, in the tango dance of literature and lust, in the exaltation of pleasure, in a very definite degeneration of our moral fiber.

"Lest we forget that our spirit is being purified in the furnace of war and the shadow of death. Do you remember the protest of those poilus when some unclean plays were sent to the battle front for their entertainment?

"'We are not pigs'—that was the message they sent back.

"Lest we forget that the spirit of man has been lifted up out of the mud and dust of the battle lines, out of the body tortured with pain and weariness and vermin, out of the close companionship of the dead into high association on the bloody altar of liberty and sacrifice.

"Lest we forget that the spirit of our own boys shall be thus lifted up, and our duty to put our house in order and make it a fit place for them to live in when they shall have returned to it from battle-fields swept, as a soldier has written, by the cleansing winds of God."

CHAPTER II.—WHICH TEACHES THAT ONE SHOULD NEVER HITCH HIS CONSCIENCE TO

A POST AS IF IT WERE A NANNY-GOAT AND GO OFF AND LEAVE IT

Truth is a great teacher but she often quarrels with the cook," said Mr. Potter, while looking at his watch.

He went to the telephone and called his home and presently began to address his wife as follows:

"Hello, Betsy! Say, don't expect me 'till I come. I'm in trouble. A feller came in here and started the war all over again and there's no tellin' when it'll end. I do not want an inconclusive peace."

As he hung up the telephone his stenographer came in to say good night. Mr. Potter took his old rifle off the wall, dusted It with a desk cloth and said:

"My great grandfather used that in the battle of Lexington."

He squinted down its long barrel while he gave these instructions to his helper.

"Joe, send down to The Sign of the Flapjack, née Child's, and order corned beef hash and poached eggs and apple pie and coffee for two."

He turned to me and asked:

"Any amendments to propose to that ticket?"

"None," I answered.

"Then we will consider it elected. Have the table spread here by the fire, if you please."

He filled and lighted his pipe, settled down in an easy chair and began again, with his gun resting across his knees: "The superors try to square themselves by giving to the poor. It doesn't work. Often we do more harm than good by giving to the poor. Kindness, sympathy, loving counsel and the brotherly hand can accomplish much. But the charily of cold cash is a questionable thing. The girl who knits a pair of socks accomplishes a larger net result to the good than the one that gives ten pairs to charity. The girl who did the knitting really produced something. She had made the world better off by one pair of socks. There is no doubt about that. The girl who has bought and given away ten pairs has produced nothing. She has made the world in general no better off. She is a slacker. She is trying to make her money do her work for her.

"The time has come when the world in general has to be considered by each of us. Civilized humanity has been compacted into a unit. It is threatened by famine and tyranny. All the money there is can not save us from these perils unless a lot of people get busy who are now doing nothing but eat and play. Money has become a very cheap and vulgar thing—almost every one has money these days.

"The time of the great assessment has come and the Lord God is taking His inventory. Everything is being measured and valued; even your usefulness, my friend. What are you producing? Is it enough to feed and clothe yourself and family, even? Corn and potatoes and wheat and wool are more than money these days. If you don't help to produce them, you are, more or less, a dead weight.

"The idle lands in America ought to get busy. How? The rich men should begin to cultivate them. I know one such man who is growing two hundred and fifty acres of potatoes in Florida where nothing has grown before, and it is estimated his yield will be at least fifty thousand bushels. Now, that man is doing a real service to Democracy.

"When the monster of war is devouring the fruitfulness of the earth and stopping the labor of those who produce it, there is only one remedy. We must increase that fruitfulness so that there shall be enough to feed the monster and the people at home. If this is to be done, every one must work. In such a situation, the idleness of the able-bodied becomes a disgrace, and his dinner the food of remorse.

"Get busy. I do not mean that we should never play. I do mean that every day we should do a fair day's work with our hands and brain for the good of the world at large.

"The war has established two brotherhoods, my friend—that's the big thing about it. A brotherhood of democracy and a brotherhood of slaves.

"This brotherhood of slaves has been created by the leprous soul of Bill Hohenzollern. He has broken down the will of the average man in Germany and established his own in place of it. He has yoked his people with the slaves of Turkey and Bulgaria, and with them has overawed the will of the Austro-Hungarians, mostly a decent people. The will of the Kaiser has spread over middle Europe like a plague. The name of the plague is Williamism. We have caught it in America."

"In America!" I exclaimed.

"In America," Mr. Potter went on. "The quarantine officer has been bribed. He has left the door open and the plague has come in. The name of that officer is Human Conscience. Williamism can make no progress save