your friends haven't the same love of adventure that you have. Let
them stay at home and mind their own business if they want to and
can't see things as we do."

"Yes, but it's different now to what it was at first. Everybody knows
we are in this fight to the death,--that if we are licked it is
'good-night'!" said the Colonel.

"You can't convince them of that in England--not all at once," argued
the Cap. "The newspapers still construe every local success into a
great victory, the great mass of the people think the war will be over
in the autumn, and the strikers still strike!"

"Well, if they don't see the desperate nature of the affair in England
how can you expect them to realize it in Canada?" questioned the Doc.
"England has air raids, bombardment of her coast towns by German
raiders, ships sunk by submarines and all the evidences of a nearby
war. Of course she thinks she has the money and that money will win. I
guess Germany hasn't much real money but she carries on pretty well
without it."

"She is like America in that respect in regard to money--thinks that
the last dollar will win," answered the Cap. "It won't, its the last
big army in the field that can strike at a vital point that will win
this war."

"That takes money," said the Colonel.

"Yes, but hang it!" countered the Cap., "Germany can print money and
keep on paying; as long as the war lasts paper money will be honored;
it has to be if the Government says so. Only when the end comes and
there is no gold to honor the paper will the crash come: Germany hopes
to be in the position to obtain compensation when the war ends. I
believe that Germany is deliberately trying to ruin the Allies and
particularly England by causing them to make tremendous expenditures
in gold, which is the only thing neutrals will honour; then when we
are weakened in both men and money she hopes to get in her knock-out!"

"As a secondary consideration she may be trying to ruin England
because she has failed to get in the knock-out blow; that is more
likely," reasoned the Colonel. "She has tried hard enough to give the
knock-out both in the first rush to Paris, at Ypres, at Verdun, at the
battle of Jutland, and by her Zep and submarine campaigns. Hitherto
she has failed. Now I believe she is carrying on in the hope that we
will become exhausted and quit; they don't know the English."

"Neither does anybody else," said the Cap. angrily, "they don't know
themselves. They laug