Within a fortnight of the outbreak arose a crying need for men. Few, even at that moment, were bold enough to breathe the word "conscription." Britain was a maritime power. Armies on the Continental scale were none of her business. Russia and France bred to European conditions, with a fundamental man power fully equal to that of the Central Empires could be trusted to hold their own. But these fallacies were soon exposed. Still, even then, the country hesitated to take the plunge. Conscription seemed to many the direct negation of what it had stood for in the past. These still pinned their faith to the system of voluntary levies. The rally of the country's manhood to a cause only indirectly its own was beyond all precedent. Field Marshal Viscount Partington mobilized his very best mop and sent it to deal with the Atlantic. For all that the flood did not subside and it gradually dawned on the public mind that more comprehensive methods might be needed. In the meantime the Hun was at the gate of Paris. The Channel ports, if not actually in the hands of the enemy, were as good as lost. Belgium was being ground under the heel of a savage conqueror. And in the city of Blackhampton, as elsewhere in Britain, these things made a very deep impression. Among the many forcible men that a new world phase revealed Blackhampton to possess, none stood out more boldly in those first grim weeks than Josiah Munt. The proprietor of the Duke of Wellington was a man of peculiar gifts, and it was soon only too clear that not only Blackhampton, but England herself, had need of them. His was the ruthless energy that disdains finesse. It sees what to do, or believes it does--almost as important in life as we know it!--and goes straight ahead and gets it done. One evening in the middle of September Josiah came home to dinner in a very black mood. It was not often that he yielded to depression. But he had had a hard day on local war committees in the course of which he had been in contact with men nearer to the center of things than he was himself. Moreover, these were men from whom this shrewd son of the midlands was only too ready to learn. They were behind the scenes. Sources of information were open to them which even a Blackhampton alderman might envy; and they were far from echoing the airy optimism of the public press. The fabric of society, stable but elastic, by means of which Josiah himself and so many like him had been able in the course of two or three decades to rise from obscurity to a certain power and dignity was in urgent danger. The whole of the western world was in the melting pot. That which had been could never be again. Cherished institutions were already in the mire. And all this was but the prelude to a tragedy of which none could see the end. Josiah's mood that evening was heavy. Even the presence at the meal of his sister-in-law, as a rule a natural tonic, did little to lighten it. "They won't get Paris now," she affirmed.