“Jeez,” sighed McAdoo. “It means we can’t pay for the war. Which— I mean, you’re all educated. It doesn’t mean the Kaiser will be driving a chariot down Wilshire, but, well, I can’t think of a worse tragedy, really.”

Mary said, “You might have missed the speeches, Charlie, but if you buy a bond, it helps clothe and shelter the troops.”

“I know that.”

“I can genuinely think,” said McAdoo, “of no worse consequence than San Francisco not going over the top. That sends a terrible message.”

“We’ll do the best we can,” said Pickford. A small part of the crowd had started chanting her name, and she looked at her wristwatch. “Perhaps I should go last,” she said.

“Mary,” cautioned Chaplin.

Bill Hart would go first. Hart, who had a face chiseled from a stone mesa, was fifty-three years old. He wore a tweed suit and a tan silk Stetson Careyhurst hat the width of a serving platter, and he was toying with a thirty-five-foot length of No. 4 silk rope. He was a former cowboy who enjoyed the prairie, the desert, his horse, his bulldog, thinking of new stunts, and making films. He was frightened of attention, women, and seeming swell-headed. Photoplay voted him the man you would most want at your side during a stampede.

After Hart dodged around the tank of water and strode to center stage, he performed the same roping tricks he had done in New York, Philadelphia, Denver, Houston, and Los Angeles, while delivering the same somewhat stirring speech that lasted exactly four minutes (he did not believe his fame bought him even an extra few seconds onstage).

At the end, an actor dressed as the Kaiser began to sneak up on him from behind, stepping high, in full military regalia, his arms drawn back like vulture wings, and fingers pointing down like claws. The crowd pointed and called, “Bill! Bill!” and Hart turned and flung his lasso over the Kaiser.

Fairbanks skipped onstage with a giant mallet. Its dowel was six feet long, and its barrel the height of a man. Written on its side, in letters the farthest spectator could see, was the phrase “Liberty Loans.” While the Kaiser thrashed in the ropes, Fairbanks wound up, whistled through his teeth to get the Kaiser’s attention (after all, it was not fair play to hit him from behind), and then walloped him with such force that he, Fairbanks, was lifted off the ground.

The Kaiser stumbled, weak in the knees; the crowd cheered; Fairbanks gestured toward him as if asking whether he should finish him off; and so Fairbanks took a second swing, and a third, which knocked the Kaiser flat to the ground.