ing skies
with their clamour, vaunting the might of Baal, cheering their
antichrist, drenching the knees of their own red gods with the blood
of little children.

It seemed impossible for Americans to understand that these things
could be--were really true--that the horrors the papers printed were
actualities happening to civilised people like themselves and their
neighbours.

Out of their own mouths the German tribes thundered their own disgrace
and condemnation, yet America sat dazed, incredulous, motionless.
Emperor and general, professor and junker, shouted at the top of their
lungs the new creed, horrible as the Black Mass, reversing every
precept taught by Christ.

Millions of Teuton mouths cheered fiercely for the new
religion--Frightfulness; worshipped with frantic yells the new
trinity--Wotan, Kaiser and Brute Strength.

Stunned, blinded, deafened, the Western World, still half-paralysed,
stirred stiffly from its inertia. Slowly, mechanically, its arteries
resumed their functions; the reflex, operating automatically, started
trade again in its old channels; old habits were timidly resumed;
minds groped backward, searching for severed threads which connected
yesterday with to-day--groped, hunted, found nothing, and, perplexed,
turned slowly toward the smoke-choked future for some reason for it
all--some outlook.

There was no explanation, no outlook--nothing save dust and flame and
the din of Teutonic hordes trampling to death the Son of Man.

So America moved about her worn, deep-trodden and familiar ways, her
mind slowly clearing from the cataclysmic concussion, her power of
vision gradually returning, adjusting itself, little by little, to
this new heaven and new earth and this hell entirely new.

The _Lusitania_ went down; the Great Republic merely quivered. Other
ships followed; only a low murmur of pain came from the Western
Colossus.

But now, after the second year, through the thickening nightmare the
Great Republic groaned aloud; and a new note of menace sounded in her
drugged and dreary voice.

And the thick ears of the Hun twitched and he paused, squatting
belly-deep in blood, to listen.

* * * * *

Barres walked homeward. Somewhere along in the 40's he turned eastward
into one of those cross-streets originally built up of brownstone
dwelling houses, and now in process of transformation into that
architectural and commercial miscellany which marks the tra