Page:The web (1919).djvu/336

 CHAPTER XV

THE STORY OF CALIFORNIA

A Series of Graphic Case Stories from All Over the Golden State—Stirring Romances from the Capital of Romance—The A. P. L. in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Everywhere Between—the Pacific Coast in War Times.

Time was when there were just two really cosmopolitan towns in the United States. Merely being mixed in population does not mean cosmopolitanism; but San Francisco and New Orleans were two towns which could offer any American something to see. The fire changed San Francisco to a certain extent, and the North has ruined New Orleans all it could; but the soul of each of these two towns still goes marching on, incapable of destruction. If sudden wealth could not make San Francisco avaricious, nor solid prosperity leave her sordid; if earthquake, fire and famine could not daunt her unquenchably buoyant heart—what reason have we to believe that a small matter like a world war would much disturb her poise?

'Frisco by the Golden Gate—that last viewpoint where America faces the Orient and her own future as well—took her war philosophically, allowed her Hindu conspiracies to run their course, and viewed with none too great agitation the flood of disloyalty which inevitably was caught by the western shore, just as once a better sort of material was caught in the sluices of her old Long Toms. San Francisco knows she is here to stay, and believes that this Republic also is here to stay.

The A. P. L. in San Francisco

That there would be an A. P. L. organization in San Francisco admitted of no doubt. The city was ably organized