McAdoo asked him to say what was on his mind, and his secretary, in hushed tones, told him all that he’d heard. This was how McAdoo learned the shameful story of T. H. Münsterberg.

The letter went unsent. McAdoo turned to other matters, for he was ambitious and there was a war on.

Shortly after meeting Chaplin at the beach house, he started to plan the largest public event in American history: the Third Liberty Loan Drive. He had a corkboard to which he affixed cards with new ideas: contests, sales of pies and flags, and, as he grew bolder, after a walk past 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where sheep now grazed in the spirit of wartime responsibility, a new card went up, “Shear the sheep. Auction their wool.” And Hollywood movie stars touring from town to town, with a display of military hardware to greet them. One of the last cards read, simply, “publicity,” for he thought it was a good idea but he wasn’t sure how it worked. No one was—yet.

He stared at his corkboard, trying to make it all cohere into one idea. Then it did. Patriotism no longer conflicted with pleasure. They were now transitive. This was not a series of parades, but a drive from one shore to the other, manifest destiny, and had to be planned for as if it were as inevitable as the swell and crest of an awesome wave.

His secretary saw him staring one morning, and stepped toward the corkboard with confusion. For it was now empty except for two cards. “Why have you written ‘squirrels’ and ‘pigeons’ on the board?”

“Because we’re going to attract them all.”

2

On the evening of Wednesday, April 17, 1918, two hours after the last scheduled arrival, the San Francisco train station contained but one patron: author and Harvard School of Psychology Professor Timofy H. Münsterberg.

A broken man, he planned to spend the night on a bench, his overcoat rolled into a pillow, and a pair of film canisters propping up his feet, which he had to elevate while he slept, a new requirement for his rapidly fading health. Alone and periodically confused, he recognized that his spirit was softening like tallow and his flame was at its end. He was about to make the last scheduled appearance of his public career, at an event where he would not be the star, or even a supporting player, at one of those strange moments when the threads of the known universe tied into a many-stringed knot through which all destinies seemed to pass at the same time.