and while many of them may snap back after the war to the old
egoistic individualistic way of looking at life, their examples
will persist, and their lives, when they go back to the old rut,
will never be the same lives that they were before.

But here is a story, an American story which has in it the makings
of a hero tale. It came to us in Paris, bit by bit. We saw it and
no one told it to us. Yet here it is, and it should begin in form.
Once upon a time in America when the people were changing their
gods, a certain major god of finance named James Hazen Hyde, head
of a great insurance company, fell into disfavour; and the people,
changing their gods, cast him away. If men had been serving the
old gods they would have said, "Go it while you're young," to the
youth, but instead they said unpleasant things. So he went to France
and vanished from the map, but he did not entirely understand why
he was banished. He had done nothing that other young gods did not
do and he was amazed, but he faded. He lived in Paris as an exile,
not as a god, and he couldn't for the life of him tell why. But
when the war came he had a mighty human desire to serve his country;
just to serve, mind you, not to be exalted. He was fifty years old,
too old to pack a rifle; too old to mount an airship; too old to
stop a bullet without taking two or three other good men and true,
younger than he, to watch him. So he had hard work to find service.
Then along came the American Red Cross and it wanted servants--not
major generals, not even captains; but just chauffeurs and interpreters
and errand boys and things. And young Jimmy Hyde, who had been the
Prince of Wales of the younger gods of fashionable finance, and
who was cast out when the people changed their gods, came to Red
Cross headquarters with his two cars, and offered them and himself
to serve. And they put him in a uniform, with a Sam Browne belt,