careful to avoid a word or act that might
give him pain, naturally shared the general feeling of their people.
For them the war was only another of those constantly recurring European
scraps which were the inevitable result of the forms of government which
these nations insisted upon retaining. If peoples were determined to
have kings and emperors, what other could they expect but wars. France,
of course, was quite another thing. The sympathy of America with
France was deep, warm and sincere. America could not forget the gallant
Lafayette. Besides, France was the one European republic. As for
Britain, the people of Chicago were content to maintain a profoundly
neutral calm, and to a certain extent the Wakehams shared this feeling.

In Larry's immediate circle, however, there were two exceptions.
One, within the Wakeham family, was Elfie. Quick to note the signs of
wretchedness in him and quick to feel the attitude of neutrality assumed
by her family toward the war, the child, without stint and without
thought, gave him a love and a sympathy so warm, so passionate, that
it was to his heart like balm to an open wound. There was no neutrality
about Elfie. She was openly, furiously pro-Ally. The rights and wrongs
of the great world conflict were at first nothing to her. With Canada
and the Canadians she was madly in love, they were Larry's people and
for Larry she would have gladly given her life. Another exception to the
general state of feeling was that of Hugo Raeder. From the first Raeder
was an intense and confessed advocate of the cause of the Allies. From
personal observation he knew Germany well, and from wide reading he had
come to understand and appreciate the significance of her world policy.
He recognised in German autocracy and in German militarism and in German
ambition a menace to the liberties of Europe. He represented a large and
intellectually influential class of men in the city and throughout the
country generally. Graduates of the great universities, men high in the
leadership of the financial world, the editors of the great newspapers
almost to a man, magazine editors and magazine writers untinged by
racial or personal affinity with Germany, these were represented by
Raeder, and were strongly and enthusiastically in sympathy with the aims
of the Allies, and as the war advanced became increasingly eager to have
their country assume a definite stand on the side of those nations whom
they believed to be f