That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France were still of the immense, remote distance.

By no stretch of imagination could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the "frat," the Lumen, or the university.

Really important matters were the doings of the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field, and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine.

But in May there came a shock which changed things for a time.
The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors, until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of miles from the murder.
Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went quite wild.

No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in the action of the country.