usky enough--but the rest of
us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to
learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any
sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular _profession_, like
practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you
remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what
we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to
be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember
Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical
school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in _Persia_.
Golly!"

He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
"Well, there's _one_ good old boy was with our class for a while, back
in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old
rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper
says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off
cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies',
you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives
of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed
to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski;
he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the
workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says
he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money
for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend
to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm
gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap
to his comrade's shoulder. "It certainly looks as if our big days were
walking toward us!"

He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and
1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The
President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there
reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even
to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost
quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.

The bugles sounded across the continent; drums a