re dressed in gauze muzzles. In some of the cities
the entire populace went with bandaged mouths, and a man who would
steal a furtive puff of a cigarette stole up a quiet street and kept
his eyes alert for the police.

Whole families were stricken down and brave women who dared the
pestilence found homes where father, mother, and children lay writhing
and starving in pain and delirium.

At the shipyard every precaution was taken, and Davidge fought the
unseen hosts for his men and for their families. Mamise had worn
herself down gadding the workmen's row with medicines and victuals in
her basket. And yet the death-roll mounted and strength was no
protection.

In Washington and other cities the most desperate experiments in
sanitation were attempted. Offices were closed or dismissed early.
Stenographers took dictation in masks. It was forbidden to crowd the
street-cars. All places of public assembly were closed, churches no
less than theaters and moving-picture shows. It was as illegal to hold
prayer-meetings as dances.

This was the supreme blow at religion. The preachers who had confessed
that the Church had failed to meet the war problems were dazed.
Mankind had not recovered from the fact that the world had been made a
hell by the German Emperor, who was the most pious of rulers and
claimed to take his crown from God direct. The German Protestants and
priests had used their pulpits for the propaganda of hate. The
Catholic Emperor of Austria had aligned his priests. Catholic and
Protestants fought for the Allies in the trenches, unfrocked or in
their pulpits. The Bishop of London was booed as a slacker. The Pope
wrung his hands and could not decide which way to turn. One British
general frivolously put it, "I am afraid that the dear old Church has
missed the bus this trip."

All religions were split apart and, as Lincoln said of the Civil War,
both sides sent up their prayers to the same God, demanding that He
crush the enemy.

For all the good the Y. M. C. A. accomplished, it ended the war with
the contempt of most of the soldiers. Individual clergymen won love
and crosses of war, but as men, not as saints.

The abandoned world abandoned all its gods, and men fought men in the
name of mankind.

Even against the plague the churchfolk were refused permission to pray
together. Christian Scientists published full pages of advertising
protesting against the horrid situation, but nobody heeded.

The ship of st