“From every corner and window now glared forth, ‘Your King and your Country need you.’ Those words seared my heart like fire, but no, I argued, I must make good with mother. But no matter how I tried to cajole myself, the words seemed to follow me around like an accusing finger. No, he wasn’t my king. I was an American by right of birth, but still they blazoned at me until I could see them with my eyes shut. They starred the darkness of night; why, even in my sleep they clutched me in a ghostly dream. The next day and for many days I saw them aflame on the pavement, they were written on the sky in white letters, but still I fought. “When England’s young manhood sprang, as it were, from the earth, armed to the teeth, and marched shoulder to shoulder in regular beat,—it seemed like the pulsation of my own heart—as they swung along through the streets of London, my head swam, my throat tightened, and—But when I read of heroic little Belgium so nobly holding out against the ruthless destroyer of justice and honor, I gave in and became one of Kitchener’s mob. “Those were not pleasant hours,” continued Philip, “waiting at the Horse Guard Parade to read when I must report at the regimental depot at Hounslow, for I felt I was a misfit, in with a lot of men that, to my inexperienced eyes, seemed the scum of England, and I sickened of my job. “But when the news continued to pour in that Liège had fallen, that the Germans had entered Brussels, that the British Expeditionary Forces were retreating, heroically fighting, that Namur, Louvain, and other towns were being ruthlessly seized and devastated by the enemy, and their hellish atrocities began to be rumored about, the past, together with all hopes and desires for the future, were wiped out as clean as a slate in a spirit of forgetfulness. I lived in the moment, buoyed by the grim determination to fight like hell to down the oppressor of men’s rights, to lose my life if need be, in order to give freedom to those who were to come after. “My spirits took a leap when I registered at the Hounslow Barracks as a Royal Fusileer, although I grinned humorously, for if I had felt like a misfit in London I was a guy now, appareled like a bloomin’ lay-figure in the cast-off rags of some old-clothes shop, and had sensed that I was only a steel rivet in a big machine. I was no duck either, taking to the drills like water, for I would stand hopelessly bewildered at the sharp orders, ‘Form fours! One-one-two! Platoon! Form Fours!’ and similar commands, that were like kicks on a befuddled brain. But I gritted my teeth and stuck to my guns.