Wilbur Cowen had hesitated in the matter of war.

He wanted to be in a battle--had glowed at the thought of fighting--but if the war was going to be stopped in its beginning, what would be the use of starting?
And he was assured and more than half believed that it would be stopped.
Merle Whipple was his informant--Merle had found himself.

The war was to be stopped by the _New Dawn_, a magazine of which Merle had been associate editor since shortly after his release from college.
Merle, on that afternoon of golf with Wilbur, had accurately forecast his own future.

Confessing then that he meant to become a great writer, he was now not only a great writer but a thinker, in the true sense of the word.

He had taken up literature--"not muck like poetry, but serious literature"-- and Whipple money had lavishly provided a smart little craft in which to embark.