"c/o American Officers' Club, London.
"P.S.—We're working like beavers getting things ready for the American Army which is coming. It looks slow, but when Uncle Sam's men are ready, Fritz is going to enjoy a real avalanche. This, I promise you.
"L. C."
IV
One morning a south coast train contained a first-class compartment which was shared by Lieutenant Craighouse, U.S.A., and a timorously proper gentleman who read the Times for twenty minutes, and then stared at nothing very intently—an art highly developed amongst those who worship at the shrine of good form.
Craighouse was silent also for over an hour, which was a feat of the first magnitude for him. He was thinking of some official figures shown to him, in confidence, a week past—figures which gave the totals of England's manufacture of munitions and guns, her construction of aeroplanes and tanks, her production of all the minutiæ of war essentials, in quantities which his brain could hardly grasp.
Judged by any standard, the achievement was amazing. For a nation at peace it would have been stupendous; but, in addition, this country that amused Americans, this nation of obsolete methods and lack of organization, had held the seas open and frustrated Germany's plans on land. He wondered if he had been a fool—if, after all, the English were not the most efficient race on earth. Just then an advertisement, conspicuously placed beside the mirror in the compartment, smote his eye, and he gasped.
"How many people ride in a carriage like this in one day?" he asked abruptly.
The well-bred one cleared his throat and shook his head. They had not been introduced; and, besides, he didn't know.
"Ten, twenty, forty—say thirty?" said Craighouse.