him with the proviso that he must take out his British naturalisation papers.  This changing of nationality was a most bitter pill for his family to swallow.  The boy had done his best to be a soldier; he was the eldest son, and there they would willingly have had the matter rest.  Moreover they could compel the matter to rest there, for, being under age, he could not change his nationality without his father’s consent.  It was his last desperate argument that turned the decision in his favour, “If it’s a choice between my honour and my country, I choose my honour every time.”  So now he’s a Britisher, learning “spit and polish” and expecting to bring down a Hun almost any day.

One noticed in almost the smallest details how deeply America had committed her conscience to her new undertaking.  While in England we grumble about a food-control which is absolutely necessary to our preservation, America is voluntarily restricting herself not for her own sake, but for the sake of the Allies.  They say that they are being “Hooverized,” thus coining a new word out of Mr. Hoover’s name.  Sometimes these Hooverish practices produce contrasts which are rather quaint.  I went to stay with a friend who had just completed as his home an exact reproduction of a palace in Florence.  Whoever went short, there was little that he could not afford.  At our meals I noticed that I was the only person who was served with butter and sugar, and enquired why.  “It’s all right for you,” I was told; “you’re a soldier; but if we eat butter and sugar, some of the Allies who really need them will have to go short.”  A small illustration, but one that is typical of a national, sacrificial, underlying thought.

Later I met with many instances of the various forms in which this thought is taking shape.  I was in America when the Liberty War Loan was so amazingly over-subscribed.  I saw buses, their roofs crowded with bands and orators, doing the tour of street-corners.  Every store of any size, every railroad, every bank and financial corporation had set for its employes and customers the ideal sum which it considered that they personally ought to subscribe.  This ideal sum was recorded on the face of a clock, hung outside the building.  As the gross amount actually collected increased, the hands were seen to revolve.  Everything that eloquence and ingenuity could devise was done to gather funds for the war.  Big advertisers made a gift of their newspaper space to the nation.  There were certain public-spirited men who took up blocks of war-bonds, making the request that no interest should be paid.  You went to a theatre; during the interval actors and actresses sold war-certificates, harangued the audience and set the example by their own purchases.

When the Liberty War Loan had been raised, the Red Cross started its great national drive, apportioning the necessary grand total among all the cities from sea-board to sea-board, according to their wealth and population.