’Truly we are a strange people.  We have a President who deliberately cuts his political throat with a phrase, “too proud to fight;” but because we think Wilson is a greater man than he himself knows, we sew up the cut and send him back for another term.  In the same way, although every red-blooded American has in his heart been at war with Germany since the Lusitania, we permit this man Selwyn to go on cocaining the conscience of our people until our flag, which we have loved to honour, is beginning to be a thing of shame.  He should be brought back from England and interned here with a few “neutral” German-Americans.  He certainly can write, and perhaps from confinement he might give us a second De Profundis.  His book, America’s War, which is now on the market, is a series of arguments showing that America is at war with the causes of the war.  It is a nice conceit.  Our advice is to add the book to your library—­but don’t read it for ten years.  In that time it will be interesting to see the work of a brilliant mind prostituted (and in this we are placing the most charitable construction on Mr. Selwyn’s motives) by intellectual perversion.’

Without the expression of his face undergoing any change, Selwyn carefully placed the letter on his file, and took from the envelope a number of American press clippings.  Choosing them at random, he contented himself with reading the headings: 

‘Author of “The Island of Darkness” again hits out.’

‘"Britain has thrived on European medievalism,” says Austin Selwyn.’

‘More hot air from the super-Selwyn.’

‘Selwyn is the spokesman for enlightened America.’

’Masterful thinker, masterful writer, is the author of “The Island of Darkness."’

‘What does Selwyn receive from Germany?’

‘The arch-hypocrite of American letters.’

With a shrug of his shoulders he threw them to one side.  ’A pack of hounds,’ he muttered, ‘howling at the moon!’

He leaned back in his chair and pondered over the written word that could leap such spaces and carry his message into countries which he had never seen.  It was with a deeper emotion than just the author’s pleasure at recognition that he visualised his ancestor leaving Holland for the New World, and the strange trend of events which was resulting in the emigrant’s descendant sending back to the Netherlands his call to higher and world citizenship.

Still ruminating over the power that had become his, he noticed a letter, on the envelope of which was written ‘On Active Service,’ and breaking the seal, found that it was from Douglas Watson, written at a British hospital in France.  As Selwyn read it the impassiveness of his face gave way to a look of trouble.  For the first time in many months there was the quick play of expression about his lips and his eyes that had always differentiated him from those about him.