“Until a bigger one turns up.” “There is n’t any bigger one,” retorted his general manager with profound conviction. In the ensuing days it seemed to the owner of The Guardian that there could be no more racking one. For, step by step, as war drew nearer, the revenues of The Guardian declined. The secret committee work of the Deutscher Club was as effective as it was quiet. Uncertainty in business conditions was producing a logical letup in advertising, and the boycott was borrowing impetus from this tendency. A committee from the Retailers’ Association had approached Jeremy on the subject of a reduction of rates. He had retorted hotly upon them that they were making themselves the agents of an attack upon The Guardian because of its Americanism. Matthew Ellison had attempted to smooth matters over with a “business is business” plea; but Ahrens, of the Northwestern Stores, had sneered at The Guardian for making capital out of cheap jingoism, and the session had ended in taunts and recriminations. Its echo had followed in the loss of some minor advertisements. The department stores, however, could not yet bring themselves to abjure so valuable a medium, no matter how defiant its attitude. Business _was_ business to that extent. Meantime Jeremy, amidst all his worries and troubles, was conscious of a great and unwonted inner peace. He was doing his job as it came to him to be done. The present was engrossed in the fight, growing sterner and more demanding day by day. His future was clear before him. He knew what course he must steer. If The Guardian were driven upon the rocks, or rather if the submarines got her (he grinned with cheerful determination over this preferred metaphor), at least she would go down fighting, and the flag that she had flown would be caught up from the flood and carried on. Wavering and uncertain notes from that quaint herald-figure, heading its pages, were a thing of the past. At last it had “sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.” And, when the crash came, he, Jeremy, could find refuge in his country’s armed service. That was an unfailing comfort. More potently sustaining, even, than this was the thought that the dear and distant and unforgotten reader of The Guardian overseas must, now and to the end, believe in it. CHAPTER XII