Captain Billy frequented the Paradise pretty regularly at election time, for he was a Republican of the adamantine sort and felt it his duty to use every chance to impress on people the unfathomable folly of allowing a Democrat to hold any sort of office. But it was when there was a war anywhere on the earth that Captain Billy never missed a night. He never had any doubt about which side he was on, about the character and ability of generals or what they ought to do. He never for an instant hesitated over Belgium's case, or doubted the guilt of Germany. Much as he hated England--Civil War experience on top of a revolutionary inheritance--he defended loudly her going in, thought it the decentest thing in her history. It took Captain Billy at least three months to grasp the idea that we should have taken a hand at the start, but in this he was in no way behind the most eminent advocates of that theory. Like all of them at the start he accepted with sound instinct the doctrine of neutrality. Before Christmas, however, Captain Billy was hard at the Administration. "If we had done our duty in the beginning," was his regular introduction to all arguments--hence the name which was soon fixed on him of "Captain If." Mr. Jo Commons was as steady an attendant of the War Board as Uncle Billy, and in every way his antithesis. He had for years been the leading cynic and scoffer of Sabinsport. You could depend upon him to find the weak spot in anybody's argument, the hypocrisy in any generous action. According to Mr. Jo Commons there was no such thing as sound or noble sentiment. All human thought and feeling he held to be worm-eaten by self-interest, and he spent his leisure, of which he had much, for he was a bachelor with a law practice which he had studiously kept on a leisure basis, in unearthing reasons for mistrusting the undertakings of his fellowmen. The war gave him a wonderful chance. His was the first voice raised in Sabinsport in defense of the invasion of Belgium. His defense of Germany and his contempt for England were Shavian in their skill. If Captain Billy contributed certainty, idealism and emotion to the Board, and Mr. Jo Commons doubt, realism and cynicism, a traveling salesman, Brutus Knox by name, kept it in suspicion and gossip. Brutus was a stout, jolly, clean-shaven, immaculate seller of "notions and machinery," and under this elastic head he handled a motley lot of stuff in a district where the Paradise was the most comfortable hotel; and it was his habit to "make it" for Sundays if possible. Brutus was a master-hand at gossip. He liked it all, and told it all--gay and sad, true and false, sacred and obscene. He was always welcome at the Paradise, but never more so than since the war began, for he brought back weekly from Pullman smoking rooms, hotel lobbies and business lunches a bag of "inside information" which kept the War Board sitting until midnight and sent it home swollen with importance.