“To arms! Ye warriors all! Your bold battalions call! March on, ye free! Death shall be ours, Or glorious victory!” Van Darrell now appeared in front of the little platform—he had modestly refused to ascend it—and introduced Mr. Philip de Brie as a British soldier, a member of “Kitchener’s mob,” known as the greatest volunteer army in the world. As Philip stepped forward in response to an enthusiastic ovation he bowed courteously, but with a certain diffidence of manner that showed that this was a more trying ordeal than being under fire at the front. The personal part of Philip’s story was quickly told,—how he came to join the army,—the audience cheering lustily when he claimed he was an American, while a tenseness seized them as he related his strange experience while lying in a shell-hole, and the revelation the apparition of the White Comrade had brought to him. Their interest continued as he told how, in the British offensive south of the Somme, he and his company, with four machine-guns, had cleaned out a Prussian machine-gun nest that had been making havoc with their men. They peppered the enemy so severely, he asserted, while playing a crisscross game with their guns, that the only remaining German gunner was captured, surrounded by his dead comrades. When their ammunition failed, and they attempted to return to their lines under a fierce artillery fire, with bursting shells and shrapnel flying around them, they were compelled to take refuge under a bridge, where they remained for four hours under a fierce gas attack. He was again cheered as he told how, in another attempt to regain the firing-line, a bomb exploded, killing several of their men, and how, when their lieutenant was missed, noted for his bravery and daring, he started out to find him. This recital was made graphic as he told of crawling on his stomach to dodge a bomb, or wiggling along to peer into shell-pits, and how, when a flare was thrown up by the enemy, illuminating the battlefield like some big electric show, he suddenly found himself, as it were, back to the wall,—for he had no ammunition,—desperately fighting a big, husky German who was fumbling in his pocket, evidently for a hand-grenade. Another cheer, and then almost a groan went through the room as Philip continued, and told how, as he tried to get him by the throat, he made a lunge at him and thrust his bayonet through his arm. The German finished off his work by knocking him on the head with his rifle, finally leading him, dazed and blinded, behind the German lines, a prisoner.