order that they in their scramble
might take more of the earth for themselves? And if this is true why not
rise like men and end this fearful carnage?"

Already these thousands were in the camps. Into Joe's room that evening
came men to give him the names and regiments of those comrades he could
trust. Joe with a few hundred others was to make his dangerous way into
the camps and the barracks, wherever that was possible, of French and
Russians and Germans alike, to carry news from one to the other, to make
ready and to plan.

Now and then, in the talk that night, I felt the thrilling presence of
that rising god, that giant spirit of the crowd, not dead but only
sleeping now to gain new strength for what it must do. And again in
gleams and flashes I saw the vision of the end--the world for all the
workers. For in this crowded tenement room, forgotten now by
governments, this rough earnest group of men seemed so sure of this
world of theirs, so sure that it was now soon to be born.

One by one they went away, and Joe and I were left alone. Slowly he
refilled his pipe. I thought of the talks we had had in ten years.

"Well Bill," he inquired at last, "what are you going to do with
yourself?"

"Write what I see in the crowd," I said, "from my new point of
view--this year's point of view," I added. I went on to tell him what
the English writer had said. And I told of my book on the harbor.

"Well," said Joe when I was through, "I guess it's about the best you
can do. You've got a wife to think of."

"You don't know her," I rejoined, and I told him how she had changed our
home in order not to stop my work.

"But don't you see what she's up to?" said Joe.

"What the devil do you mean?" I asked indignantly. Joe blew a pitying
puff of smoke.

"You poor blind dub of a husband," he said with his old affectionate
smile, "she's making you love her all the more. You're anchored worse
than ever. _You_ can't go over to Europe and take a chance at being
shot. Don't you see the hole you're in? You've got to care what happens
to you."

"I'm not so sure of that, Joe," I said. "Things in this world are
changing so fast that it's hard for any man in it to tell where he'll be
in a year from now--or even a few short months from now. It's the year
that no man can see beyond."

"You mean you're coming over?" he asked.

"I'm not sure. Just now I'm going to finish this book. I'm going to see
Eleanore through till the baby is born