In April, 1919, he sailed from Brest and on the tenth of May arrived in Rumley, discharged from the Army and jobless. On the way home he stopped over in Chicago to notify his employers that he would be ready to resume work after a month’s much-needed rest and quiet down in the old town. He was blandly informed that as soon as anything turned up they would be pleased and happy to take him back into the concern, but at present there wasn’t a vacancy in sight—in fact, they were cutting down the operating force wherever it was possible, and so on and so forth. Yes, they remembered perfectly that they had promised him his old place when he returned, but how in God’s name were they to know that the war was going to last as long as it did? He couldn’t expect them to hold a job open for him for nearly four years, could he? Only too glad to take you on again, Baxter, when things begin to pick up—and all that. Being a captain in the Army and used to plain speaking, he told the astonished general manager what he thought of him and the whole works besides, and airily went his way. The horrors of war had not affected his spirits. He went over in the first place full of cheer and enthusiasm; he came back without the latter, but indomitably possessed of the former. He had seen grim sights and sickened under the spectacle; he had stood by the side of dying comrades and wept as he would have wept over his own brother; he had known times when life was far harder to bear than the thought of death; and he had said what he believed to be his last prayer a hundred times or more. But when the guns ceased their everlasting roar and the smoke lifted to reveal a blue sky that smiled, he too smiled and was glad to be alive. He had lived on hope through the carnage of what seemed a thousand years; the hope which men, in their bewildered after-joy, were prone to call their luck. It was hope that went over the top with them, but it was luck that saw them through. And so when he was turned away, empty-handed, from the place where he had proved his worth as a soldier of industry, he was not dismayed. He experienced a lively sense of indignation, he felt outraged, but he did not sit himself down over against the walls of Nineveh to devote a single hour to lamentation.