e to the war.
For all I knew I might be reading of him, any day, when I read of a
charge or a fight over there in France! Anything was possible--aye,
probable!

I have never called myself a prophet. But then, I think, I had
something of a prophet's vision. And all the time I was struggling
with my growing belief that this was to be a long war, and a
merciless war. I did not want to believe some of the things I knew I
must believe. But every day came news that made conviction sink in
deeper and yet deeper.

It was not a happy trip, that one across the United States. Our
friends did all they could to make it so, but we were consumed by too
many anxieties and cares. How different was it from my journey
westward--only nine months earlier! The world had changed forever in
those nine months.

Everywhere I spoke for preparedness. I addressed the Rotary Clubs,
and great audiences turned out to listen to me. I am a Rotarian
myself, and I am proud indeed that I may so proclaim myself. It is a
great organization. Those who came to hear me were cordial, nearly
always. But once or twice I met hostility, veiled but not to be
mistaken. And it was easy to trace it to its source. Germans, who
loved the country they had left behind them to come to a New World
that offered them a better home and a richer life than they could
ever have aspired to at home, were often at the bottom of the
opposition to what I had to say.

They did not want America to prepare, lest her weight be flung into
the scale against Germany. And there were those who hated Britain.
Some of these remembered old wars and grudges that sensible folk had
forgotten long since; others, it may be, had other motives. But there
was little real opposition to what I had to say. It was more a good
natured scoffing, and a feeling that I was cracked a wee bit,
perhaps, about the war.

I was not sorry to see New York again. We stayed there but one day,
and then sailed for home on the Cunarder _Orduna_--which has since
been sunk, like many another good ship, by the Hun submarines.

But those were the days just before the Hun began his career of real
frightfulness upon the sea--and under it. Even the Hun came gradually
to the height of his powers in this war. It was not until some weeks
later that he startled the world by proclaiming that every ship that
dared to cross a certain zone of the sea would be sunk without warning.

When we sailed upon the old _Orduna_ we had anxieti