"Fellow citizens," he said, balancing himself on an upturned beer barrel, "it gives me great pleasure to be able to stand before you this evening"; support given and applause. "It has always seemed to me that the greatest country in the world might be considered a bit slow in entering the war." [Hear! Hear!] "But, gentlemen, now that we are in, I want to say that we will be the first out." [Loud applause!] "I want you to understand that because the United States has always been considered the historic enemy of Great Britain, Germany was enabled to persuade an ignorant electorate that the United States and Germany were friends. But now we are in, we are in to the finish. When I say finish, gentlemen, I mean a finish to the fighting, but I beg of you to be careful of the non-fighting part of my country's population, and their representatives. More I cannot say, except this, if ever your King or your sea-power is threatened, you may depend upon every true American; we owe you a debt, and depend upon it every descendant of the founders of our country will die before that obligation is allowed to be repudiated." With loud cheers, Mid was lifted from his perch. VII The Bedouin who held the unenvied record for crashes was known throughout the service as "Killem." Almost every time he went on a raid he crashed his machine, fortunately for him on this side of the lines. One night, returning from a raid on the Boche magneto works at Stuttgart, he lost his way and was forced to land, because of engine trouble, in France, near the Swiss border. The topography of the country here being mountainous, he was fortunate in merely "writing off" his aeroplane. He might easily have killed himself and his two companions, but he came out of the crash quite unhurt except for a severe chill contracted by a forced sojourn in the icy waters of a shallow pond. Pinned beneath the wreckage of his machine with an unpleasant ripple of water in close proximity to his chin, Killem had an excellent opportunity to think over his past sins while his companions in misery, who had been thrown clear for no other reason apparently except that the devil takes care of his own, struggled manfully, one with a broken arm and the other with a wrenched knee, to release him from the pressure of wreckage which held him helpless.