"I wish to the Almighty I was young enough to go with you.

And say, if you see that Kaiser anywheres afloat or ashore give him particular merry hell for me, will you ?" And then, a little later, came the news that the conscription bill had become a law and that the draft was to be a reality.

And with that news the war itself became a little more real.

And, suddenly, Phineas Babbitt, realizing that his son, Leander, was twenty-five years old and, therefore, within the limits of the draft age, became once more an ardent, if a little more careful, conscientious objector.
He discovered that the war was a profiteering enterprise engineered by capital and greed for the exploiting of labor and the common people.

Whenever he thought it safe to do so he aired these opinions and, as there were a few of what Captain Hunniwell called "yellow-backed swabs" in Orham or its neighborhood, he occasionally had sympathetic listeners.