now come into her own."

And they smiled back at him, did these worn and broken men, for the
news of the President's declaration had already filtered through the
wards; and they waved their hands to the brave American colonel with
the white moustache, stern visage, and tender heart, and in sturdy
English and voluble French and musical Italian, they congratulated him
and his noble grandson, and the charming ladies of his family, on the
splendid words of his President, to which words the patriotic Congress
would surely respond.

And Congress did respond. The Senate on April 4, and the House on
April 6, by overwhelming majorities, passed a resolution in full
accordance with the President's recommendation, declaring that a state
of war had been thrust upon the United States by the German
government, and authorizing and directing the President "to employ the
entire naval and military forces of the United States, and the
resources of the government, to carry on war against the Imperial
German government."

Colonel Richard Butler was at last content.

"I am proud of my country," he declared, "and of my President and
Congress. I have cabled the congressman from my district to tender my
congratulations to Mr. Wilson, and to offer my services anew in
whatever capacity my government can use them."

If he had favored the Allied cause before going abroad he was now
thrice the partisan that he had been. For he had seen France. He had
seen her, bled white in her heroic endeavor to drive the invader from
her soil. He had seen her ruined homes, and cities, and temples of
art. He had seen her women and her aged fathers and her young children
doing the work of her able-bodied men who were on the fighting line,
replacing those hundreds of thousands who were lying in heroes'
graves. He had been, by special favor, taken to the front, where he
had seen the still grimmer visage of war, had caught a glimpse of life
in the trenches, of death on the field, and had heard the sweep and
the rattle and the roar of unceasing conflict. And in his eyes and
voice as he walked up and down the aisles of the hospital near Rouen,
or sat at the bedside of his grandson, was always a reflection of
these things that he himself had seen and heard.

And he was a favorite in the wards. Not alone because he so often came
with his one arm laden with little material things to cheer and
comfort them, but because these men with the pierced and broken and
mutilat