The Government was already beginning to talk about the Third Liberty Loan. Somewhat fretfully Carter read the preliminary announcements. Where was this thing going to stop, anyway? He was not any more than keeping even with the game now. And even so, he was not getting so much out of life as he had been getting before. On top of that they sent the boy across. After an interval of silence Carter received a cable one day announcing his safe arrival at a port in France. It took the starch all out of him. It was like one of those nightmares he used to suffer when he dreamed of the boy in some great danger and was forced to stand by, dumb and paralyzed, powerless to help. It was like that exactly, only this was reality. Day by day and mile by mile this intangible merciless power called war was dragging the boy nearer and nearer his destruction. It was barbaric. It was wrong. This boy was his. Now he was at a port in France. Until the last few years that would not have been anything to worry about. He had wished the boy to travel. France had always stood to Carter as a land of sunshine and holidays—a sort of pre-honeymoon land to the more fortunate. To-day a port in France seemed like a port in hell. On the eight-ten they kept asking about the boy, and when Carter told Barclay that Ben was over there, Barclay answered: “Lucky dog. That ought to make you proud.” Carter made no reply. That was in March, just before the big Hun offensive. When that broke Carter did not dare read the papers for a while. Those were bad days. America had then been in the war nearly a year, and yet it was possible for those gray hordes to dash at and into the allied lines. They did it again and again, until the world stood aghast and Carter himself stood aghast. It made no difference whether he read the papers or not, for hourly bulletins were passed round the office and scarcely anything else was talked of. America had been in the war nearly a year. Uncle Sam had appropriated billions upon billions of dollars; had built shipyards the size of which staggered belief; had talked of destroyers and airplanes in terms of thousands; had established vast military camps and already drafted millions of men; had turned almost every industry in the country over to war work; had taken over the railroads and whatever else was needed. Uncle Sam had been working with his jaws set and his sleeves rolled up and flags flying from almost every housetop between the Atlantic and the Pacific; with men marching down the streets and bands playing and half the politicians of the country turned into Fourth of July orators. Yet this thing was happening over there. Lines that had been thought impregnable were falling daily. City after city was being overrun. If the Huns paused it was only for breath, and to dash on once more. Nearer and nearer they came to Paris, until the city heard the sound of their guns; nearer and nearer, until they came to Château-Thierry.