THE NORQUAY TRUST Rod's upper lip drew in a curl. He could not exactly say why. It was involuntary, instinctive. That sign offended him. The taxi that wheeled them to the Vancouver Hotel passed the place, and Rod's lip curled again at sight of the chaste illumination upon richly polished mahogany revealed through immense windows of plate glass. Again in their room that curious distaste for his brother's works came over him at an advertisement of the Norquay Trust Company in one of the evening papers he bought. It ran thusly: Your country calls you. Before you go overseas put your affairs in the capable hands of THE NORQUAY TRUST COMPANY Then he turned to the war news. Wherever he went in the city for the next two days the war topic hovered on men's lips. The streets wore the panoply of war in the recruiting aspect. Troops drilled in parks, on playgrounds. Bands marched abroad to stir men's blood. There was an edge of expectancy in the air, for the _Leipsig_, the _Dresden_, the _Nuremberg_, and two unknown battleships were loose in the Pacific. No one knew what truth lay in the rumor that any hour might see their shells dropping in the downtown section. There was nothing to stop them. They outsteamed and outgunned any British Squadron in those waters. Amid this ferment Rod walked the streets, bodily restless, uneasy in his mind. For he had somehow none of the illusions about war that carried many a young man lightly along the line of least resistance in those hectic days. There was no glamor for him in a purely military adventure. He loved his native country. He was proud of it. It had bestowed upon him a splendid heritage. He did not question a matter of duty. With his temperament and traditions such a questioning was impossible. But he revolted against being a pawn in the European game. He could not muster up an excited, voluble hate of the enemy. He did not respond so readily as some to the propaganda already loosed so effectively. He wondered a little at the execration and exhortation and invective that poured from the press, the pulpit, the fulminations from every public speaker, the vixenish resolutions of the women's societies. It was as if they were urging each other on to a task for which few had much stomach. It perplexed Rod. If one's country was at war, one must fight. That was plain to him as two plus two. Why should all these non-combatants lash themselves into such a fury over a European frontier, over the ancient feud between the Teuton and the Gaul? It amounted to this in his mind: we must fight because our statesmen have committed us to the task; but we will not whip the German by foaming at the mouth. That's childish.