THE GREAT WAR SYNDICATE

BY
FRANK R. STOCKTON
Author of "The Lady or the Tiger," "Rudder Grange,"
"The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs.
Aleshine," "What Might Have Been
Expected," etc., etc.





THE GREAT WAR SYNDICATE.



In the spring of a certain year, not far from the
close of the nineteenth century, when the political
relations between the United States and Great Britain
became so strained that careful observers on both sides
of the Atlantic were forced to the belief that a
serious break in these relations might be looked for at
any time, the fishing schooner Eliza Drum sailed from
a port in Maine for the banks of Newfoundland.

It was in this year that a new system of protection
for American fishing vessels had been adopted in
Washington. Every fleet of these vessels was
accompanied by one or more United States cruisers,