immediately taken up. At every table the conversation grew animated, the
benefits of the war were told over, and the wits cracked jokes at the
expense of the pacifists. There was not a single man in the whole
assemblage who did not owe at least two blessings to the war: financial
independence and such munificence of living as only much-envied money
magnates have allotted to them in times of peace. Among this circle of
people the war wore the mask of a Santa Claus with a bag full of
wonderful gifts on his back and assignments for brilliant careers in his
hand. To be sure here and there a gentleman was to be seen wearing a
crepe-band on his sleeve for a brother or a brother-in-law who, as
officer, had seen that other aspect of the war, the Gorgon's face.

Yet the Gorgon's face was so far away, more than sixty miles in a bee-
line, and an occasional excursion in its vicinity was an exciting little
adventure, a brief titillation of the nerves. Inside an hour the
automobile raced back to safety, back to the bath-tub, and you
promenaded asphalt streets again in shining pumps. So, who would refrain
from joining in the hymn of praise to His Excellency?

The mighty man contentedly listened a while longer to the babel of
voices aroused by what he had said, then gradually sank back into his
reflections, and gazed ahead of him seriously. He saw the sunbeams
sifting through the thick foliage and glittering on the crosses and
stars that covered the left half of his chest in three close rows. It
was a magnificent and complete collection of every decoration that the
rulers of four great empires had to bestow upon a man for heroism,
contempt of death, and high merit. There was no honor left for the
Victor of ---- still to aspire to. And only eleven short months of war
had cast all that at his feet. It was the harvest of but a single year
of war. Thirty-nine years of his life had previously gone in the service