His Family by Ernest Poole

It had rained so hard for the past two days that no one had gone to the village, which was nearly three miles from the farm. But when the storm was over at last, George and Elizabeth tramped down and came back at dusk with a bag full of mail. Their clothes were mud-bespattered and they hurried upstairs to change before supper, while Roger settled back in his chair and spread open his New York paper. It was July 30, 1914.

From a habit grown out of thirty odd years of business life, Roger read his paper in a fashion of his own. By instinct his eye swept the page for news dealing with individual men, for it was upon people's names in print that he had made his living. And so when he looked at this strange front page it gave him a swift twinge of alarm. For the news was not of men but of nations. Austria was massing her troops along the Serbian frontier, and Germany, Italy, Russia, France and even England, all were in a turmoil, with panics in their capitals, money markets going wild.