_Patriots in the trenches risk all._ Patriots in the bond-buying business are not that kind; and they study the risk with great care, and coolly avoid not only the blood risk, but also the money risk—with skill, also with patriotism. Calmly. It seems that Mr. Clews went to Washington on a night train. He relates that when he awoke in the morning he raised the car window-shade and cautiously peeped out.[141] He saw a long line of cars loaded with cannon. He was _astonished_—he confesses. Naturally, a banker is afraid of a cannon. “As I went around collecting information,” he says, “the sight of those cannon that at first had made such an indescribable impression upon me continued to haunt my vision wherever I went.... I felt that the contest would be a long and bloody one.... I was convinced that war to the knife was imminent, and that Government bonds must have a serious fall in consequence.” He telegraphed his syndicate to “sell out” and “clear the decks,” “to unload.”[142] Note that as soon as these far-from-the-firing-line patriots sniffed danger for their gold they were, as Mr. Clews virtually confesses, ready to leave the Government in the lurch and let the boys in the trenches starve till the bonds could be bought at a strangle-hold advantage in the way of discounts. Mr. Clews relates, with unmanageable pride, that the Secretary of the Treasury received him with great courtesy and supplied him with a large amount of useful information—information of the “inner” “ground-floor” sort so extremely helpful to the organizer of a bond-buying syndicate; also that the information and suggestions and encouragements he received from the Secretary were really the beginning of what he, with blushingly modest confession and a caress for himself, calls his “brilliant career.” Early in life Mr. Clews made a profound impression upon himself—a lasting impression, as his books and speeches always reveal; a not uncommon experience with “prominent people.” Thus Mr. Clews chose the humbler and more healthful rôle in patriotism. Many of Mr. Clews’ old neighbors (hot-headed young men of the War time) are dead. They have been dead a long time. Cannon balls tore some of them to pieces. Bayonets were thrust through some of them. Some were starved to death in prisons. Their once hot blood is mold now. Long ago their flesh was eaten by the battle-grave worms. Time is busy in their nameless graves gnawing at their bones. But, now fifty years after the terrible war began, Mr. Clews is alive and well—he even boasts of his good health and often gives suggestions on how to keep one’s health till ripe old age. And he is still buying bonds. His special delight is giving advice to—mankind. Mr. Clews lectures frequently. His favorite themes are “patriotism,” “the stars and stripes,” “the man behind the gun,”—and “how to succeed.” He is a sort of chairman of the committee on wind for patriots in the “greenhorn” stage.