"As soon as I can arrange things with Mr."--but he remembered he was speaking to a Brokenshire--"as soon as I can arrange things with--with my boss. He's willing to let me go, and to keep my job for me if I come back. He'll take charge of my small funds and of any Miss Adare intrusts to me. He asked me to give her that message. When it's settled I shall start for Canada." "That'll do you no good," Hugh stated, triumphantly. "They won't enlist Americans there." Larry Strangways smiled. "Oh, there are ways! If there's nothing else for it I'll swear in as a Canadian." "You'd do that!" In different tones the exclamation came from Hugh and me, simultaneously. I can still see Larry Strangways with his proud, fair head held high. "I'd do anything rather than not fight. My American birthright is as dear to me as it is to any one; but we've reached a time when such considerations must go by the board. For the matter of that, the more closely we can now identify the Briton and the American, the better it will be for the world." He explained this at some length. The theme was so engrossing that even Hugh was willing to listen to the argument. People were talking already of a world federation which would follow the war and unite all the nations in approximate brotherhood. Larry Strangways didn't believe in that as a possibility; at least he didn't believe in it as an immediate possibility. There were just two nations fitted to understand each other and act together, and if they couldn't fraternize and sympathize it was of no use to expect that miracle from races who had nothing in common. Get the United States and the British Empire to stand shoulder to shoulder, and sooner or later the other peoples would line up beside them. But you must begin at the beginning. Unless you started as an acorn you couldn't be an oak; if you were not willing to be a baby you could never become a man. There must be no more Hague conferences, with their vast programs and ineffective means. The failure of that dream was evident. We must be practical; we mustn't soar beyond the possible. The possible and the practical lay in British and American institutions and commonly understood principles. The world had an asset in them that had never been worked. To work it was the task not primarily of governments, but, first and before everything, of individuals. It was up to the British and American man and woman in their personal lives and opinions. I interrupted to say that it was up to the American man and woman first of all; that British willingness to co-operate with America was far more ready than any similar sentiment on the American side. Hugh threw the stress on efficiency. America was so thorough in her methods that she couldn't co-operate with British muddling.