VASSAR plunged next day into his fight. Waldron had moved rapidly. His opponents had already nominated an Independent Democrat of foreign birth, a Bohemian of ability, whom he knew to be a man of ambition and good address.

The women had begun a house to house canvass of voters and the number of fairy-tales they had started for the purpose of undermining his position and influence was a startling revelation of their skill in the art of lying.

Virginia Holland was booked for a canvass of each election district the last week in October. He knew what that meant. Waldron had held his trump card for the supreme moment.

The depths of vituperation, mendacity and open corruption to which the campaign descended on the part of his opponents was another revelation to Vassar of woman’s adaptability to practical methods. Never since the days of Tweed’s régime had the East Side seen anything that approached it.

He steadfastly refused to lower his standard to their level. That Virginia Holland knew the methods which Waldron had adopted was inconceivable. Vassar watched the approach of her canvass with indifference. If his people were weak enough to fall for Waldron and his crowd of hirelings, he had no desire longer to represent the district.

He ceased to worry about results. He foresaw that his majority would be reduced. He decided to let it go at that.

The gulf which separated him now from the woman he loved was apparently too deep to be bridged. On the last night of the canvass he slipped into the meeting at which she spoke just to hear her voice again. He half hoped that she might say something so false and provoking about his record that he might hate her for it. Her address was one of lofty and pure appeal for the redemption of humanity through the trained spiritual power of womanhood. She even expressed her regret at the necessity of opposing a man of the type of John Vassar.

A hundred of Vassar’s partisans were present and burst into a fierce round of applause at the mention of his name. He watched the effect with breathless interest. The cheers were utterly unexpected on the part of the speaker, and threw her for the moment off her balance. She blushed and smiled and hesitated, fumbling for words.

Vassar’s heart was pounding like a trip hammer. He could have taken the boys in his arms and carried them through the streets for that cheer. No one knew of his presence. He had slipped into a back seat in the gallery unrecognized in the dim light.

Why had she blushed when they cheered his name? The crowd, of course, could not know of the secret between them. Would she have blushed from the mere confusion of mind which the hostile sentiment of her hearers had provoked? It was possible. And yet the faintest hope thrilled his heart that she cared for him. He had played the fool to lose his head that day. He realized it now. Such a woman could not be taken by storm. Every instinct of pride and intellectual dignity had resented it.

He went home happy over the incident with the memory of her scarlet cheeks and the sweet seriousness of her voice filling his soul. His managers brought glowing reports of the situation in his district. It didn’t matter if he had a chance to win Virginia.

The results proved that his guess of a reduced majority was correct. He barely pulled through by the skin of his teeth. His margin was a paltry seven hundred and fifty. At the election two years before it had been more than six thousand.

When Congress met in December he was confronted with a situation unique in the history of the Republic. A lobby had gathered in Washington so distinguished in personnel, so great in numbers, so aggressive in its purpose to control legislation, that the national representatives were afraid of their shadows.

The avowed aim of this vast gathering was the defeat of his bill for the adequate defense of the nation. The outlines of his measures had been published and had the unanimous backing of the Army and Navy Boards, the National Security League and all the leaders of the great political parties.

Both of our ex-Presidents, Roosevelt and Taft, had endorsed it and asked for its adoption. It was known that the President and his Cabinet approved its main features. And yet its chances of adoption were considered extremely doubtful.

The lobby, which had swarmed into Washington, overran its hotels, and camped in the corridors of the Capitol, was composed of a class of men and women who had never before ventured on such a mission. What they lacked of experience they made up in aggressive insolence—an insolence so cocksure of itself that a Congressman rarely ventured from the floor of the Chamber if he could avoid it.

The leaders of the movement were apparently acting under the orders of the Reverend A. Cuthbert Pike, President of the Peace union. Vassar was amazed to find that this union was composed of more than six hundred chartered peace societies. He had supposed that there might be half a dozen such associations in the country. To be suddenly confronted by five thousand delegates representing six hundred organizations was the shock of his political life. But one society alone, the National Security League, was there to preach the necessity of insurance against war by an adequate defense.

Against this lone organization were arrayed in a single group the five thousand delegates from the six hundred peace societies. They demanded the defeat of any bill to increase our armaments in any way, shape or form. Their aim was the ultimate complete disarmament of every fort and the destruction of our navy.

In co-operation with this host of five thousand fanatics stood the Honorable Plato Barker with a personal following in the membership of Congress as amazing as it was dangerous to the future of the Republic. The admirers of the silver-tongued orator labored under the conviction that their leader had been inspired of God to guide the destinies of America. They believed this with the faith of children. For sixteen years they had accepted his leadership without question and his word was the law of their life.

Barker was opposed to the launching of another ship of war, or the mounting of another gun for defense. He was the uncompromising champion of moral suasion as the solution of all international troubles. He believed that an eruption of Mount Vesuvius could be soothed by a poultice and cured permanently by an agreement for arbitration. He preached this doctrine in season and out of season. The more seriously out of season the occasion, the louder he preached it.

That he would have a following in Congress was early developed in the session. Barker was not only on the ground daily; his headquarters had been supplied with unlimited money for an active propaganda and his office was thronged by delegates from his mass meetings called in every state of the union.

The Socialists had once more swamped the American labor unions with their missionaries and the labor federations were arrayed solidly against an increase of our army or navy.

But by far the most serious group of opponents by whom Vassar was confronted were the United Women Voters of America, marshalled under the leadership of the brilliant young Joan of Arc of the Federated Clubs. In the peculiar alignment of factions produced by the crisis of the world war the women voters held the balance of power. They practically controlled the Western states while the fear of their influence dominated the Middle West and seriously shaped public opinion in the East. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York had defeated the amendments for woman’s suffrage, yet the vote polled by their advocates had been so large the defeat was practically a triumph of their principles.

A convention of five hundred delegates, representatives of the women voters, had been called to decide on the casting of the votes of their senators and representatives. That their orders would be obeyed was a foregone conclusion. To refuse meant political suicide.

The thing which puzzled Vassar beyond measure was the mysterious unifying power somewhere in the shadows. The hand of this unseen master of ceremonies had brought these strangely incongruous forces together in a harmony so perfect that they spoke and wrote and campaigned as one man. Behind this master hand there was a single master mind tremendous in grip, baffling, inscrutable, always alert, always there. That Waldron was this mysterious force he suspected from the first. On the day he was booked to make the final address in closing the debate on his bill, the banker boldly appeared in the open as the responsible leader of the movement for the defeat of national defense.

Vassar, with a sense of sickening rage, saw him in conference with Virginia Holland and her executive committee. They held their little preliminary caucus at the door of the House of Representatives, as if to insult him with a notice of coming defeat. The young leader knew that if there were yet a man in the House who could be reached by money, Waldron would find him. And he knew that there were some who had their price.

The influence of such a man in a free democracy was to Vassar a cause of constant grief and wonder. That h............