"He ran his finger across the page to the totals, and I saw that the first total ran clear up into the thousands—and the second one into the millions!
"'Colonel Sure Pop,' said the King, 'if only the thought you put into the mind of that lad you saved this noon, might be put into the mind of all America!'
"'Your Majesty means—Safety First?' I asked.
"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.