"Quantities! Our product is superior to the Boche article, and has the
glamour of an importation. I await the contest without uneasiness."

"What contest?"

"When Jean Marie meets Johann Maria--après la guerre," said Palandeau
with a twinkle in his eye.

In the deck chair next to mine sat a dark, powerfully built young Iowan
with the intensely masculine head of a mediaeval soldier. There was a
bit of curl to the dark-brown hair which swept his broad, low forehead,
his brown eyes were devoid of fear or imagination, his jaw was set, and
the big, aggressive head rested on a short, muscular neck. He had been a
salesman of machine tools till the "selling end" came to a standstill.

"But didn't the munitions traffic boom the machine-tool industry?" I
asked.

"Sure it did. You ought to have seen what people will do to get a lathe.
You know about all that you need to make shells is a machine lathe. You
can't get a lathe in America for love or money--for anything"--he made a
swift, complete gesture--"all making shells. There isn't a junk factory
in America that hasn't been pawed over by guys looking for lathes--and
my God! what prices! Knew a bird named Taylor who used to make water
pipes in Utica, New York--had a stinking little lathe he paid two
hundred dollars for, and sold it last year for two thousand. My firm had
so many orders for months ahead that it didn't pay them to have
salesmen--so they offered us jobs inside; but, God, I can't stand indoor
work, so I thought I'd come over here and get into the war. I used to be