There was a wagon drawn up at the curb, and an earnest-eyed young
clergyman was speaking. The crowd was attentive, mildly curious.
The clergyman was emphatic without being convincing. Audrey watched
the faces about her, standing in the crowd herself, and a sense of
the futility of it all gripped her. All these men, and only a
feeble cheer as a boy still in his teens agreed to volunteer. All
this effort for such scant result, and over on the other side such
dire need! But one thing cheered her. Beside her, in the crowd,
a portly elderly Jew was standing with his hat in his hand, and
when a man near him made some jeering comment, the Jew brought his
hand down on his shoulder.
"Be still and listen," he said. "Or else go away and allow others
to listen. This is our country which calls."
"It's amusing, isn't it?" Audrey heard a woman's voice near her,
carefully inflected, slightly affected.
"It's rather stunning, in a way. It's decorative; the white faces,
and that chap in the wagon, and the gasoline torch.
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