"The King nodded. 'All the lives lost in all our battles,' he said
grimly, 'are but a drop in the sea as compared with the slaughter of a
single year in a single land!'

"'Oh, Your Majesty, let me go and teach them Safety First--now, before
another life is thrown away!'

"'No, Colonel. Not yet. The time is not yet ripe. But--perhaps we can
make a beginning. Come to me again tomorrow night, at midnight, and we
shall see.'

"The next night I went to the throne room and found the King studying a
big map. He had a red pencil and a blue one in his hand, and he pointed
to a lot of red rings he had drawn on the map.

"'Those,' he told me, 'are America's great mills. In them and the other
factories, thousands upon thousands of workmen are killed by accident
every year--by accident, Colonel, not in battle.

"'And that is not all,' the King went on. 'These blue lines mark the
trails of the great iron horses--the railroads. Last year these iron
horses trampled out thousands of lives in America alone. And all because
the Americans haven't learned to _think_ Safety!'

"That was too much for me. I pleaded with him to let me come straight to
America and help end that awful suffering. But the King shook his head.

"'The more haste, the less speed, Colonel. Before you can help America,
you must help yourself; and the quickest way to do that is first to
teach Safety to our own people. Let me see you win your spurs here in
the Borderland, and then--to America you go!'

"'Teach Safety to our own people?' I repeated, a bit puzzled. 'How ought
I to go about it, Sire?'

"'Go through all the Borderland,' said the King, 'and muster an army of
Safety Scouts. Train them to know signs that spell DANGER, as an Indian
scout reads the signs of the trail. Teach them to report every danger
signal they see--and they will teach their neighbors, and so the
knowledge will spread. But above all, be sure your Safety Scouts are
well chosen.'

"'But how?' I asked. 'Shall I pick out wise people?'

"'Colonel of the Scouts,' said the King, shrewdly, 'the wisest are not
always the safest. Have you never thought why it is "bad luck to go
under a ladder"?'

"'Never,' I owned up. 'I've always thought of it as just a proverb.'

"'True. But proverbs without reason would be like trees without roots.
Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the
climber--and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just
then. And som