And the English papers were no better. All the important ones, weeklies as well as dailies, were sent to Mr. Brokenshire, and copies lay about at Mr. Rossiter's. They sickened me. I stopped reading them. There was good in them, doubtless; but what I chiefly found was a wild tempest of abuse of this party or that party, of this leading man or that leading man, with the effect on the imagination of a ship going down amid the curses and confusion of officers and passengers alike. It may have sounded well in England; very likely it did; but in America it was horrible. I mention it here only because, in this babel of voices, my own faint pipe on behalf of a league of democracies could no more be heard than the tinkle of a sacring bell amid the shrieking and bursting of shells. I was often tempted to say no more about it and let the world go to pot. Then I thought of Larry Strangways, offering his life for an ideal as to which I was unwilling to speak a word. So I would begin my litany of Bolivia and Beluchistan over again, crooning it into the ears of people, both gentle and simple, who, in the matter of response, might never have heard the names of the two countries I mentioned together. A few lines from one of Larry Strangways's letters, written from Valcartier, prompted me to persevere in this course: People are no more interested here than they are on our side of the border; but it's got to come, for all that. What we need is a public opinion; and a public opinion can only be created by writing and talk. Thank the Lord, you and I can talk if we are not very strong on writing! and talk we must! Bigger streams have risen from smaller springs. The mustard seed is the least of all seeds; but it grows to be the greatest of herbs. It might have been easier to call forth a responsive spark had we realized that there was a war. But we hadn't--not in the way that the fact came to us afterward. In spite of the taking of Namur, Liège, Maubeuge, the advance on Paris, and the rolling back on the Marne, we had seen no more than chariots and horses of fire in the clouds. It was not only distant, it was phantom-like. We read the papers; we heard of horrors; American war refugees and English visitors alike piled up the agonies, to which we listened eagerly; we saw the moneyed magnates come and go in counsel with Mr. Brokenshire; we knitted and sewed and subscribed to funds; but, so far as vital participation went, Hugh was right in saying we were out of it. And then a shot fell into our midst, smiting us with awe.