“We will put the people to work,” he reported to his staff after one such session, bat in hand, sweat pasting his workshirt to his underwear. “We will appeal to honor, and when that fails, as it will, we will appeal to shame,” he added.

American men were to report to neighborhood registration boards, which they would find staffed by “their friends and neighbors.” Thus failure to appear would be not so much an act of disobedience to a vast economic authority as a tearful slap in the face to your pediatrician, your minister, your grocer.

There were no riots.

Semantics dissolved, and it was no longer a “draft.” Tender care was taken to remove all traces of arm-twisting, to replace them instead with decency. In a speech to Congress, President Wilson explained that, when called, the people “had volunteered in mass.”

In Crescent City, population eight hundred, there were about a hundred eligible men, fifteen of whom were medically unfit through flat feet, barbers’ itch, or varicose veins. There were also three men whose jobs were deemed “crucial to the war effort,” and all of them worked in the lighthouse. Which caused Leland a mistaken sort of relief.

Through 1917, Leland worked in shifts at the lighthouse, helped his mother can preserves, joined a volunteer fire brigade on the mainland, wrapped bandages for the Red Cross, and, in a patch of soil that was really too close to the ocean for such things, grew weak stalks of corn to use for flour. He also rehearsed on the dunes alone at dusk, bought an épée and learned as much fencing as he could without a partner, and found that, with the threat of imminent death, and a dwindling pool of beaux, the local girls’ interpretation of what constituted light petting had significantly expanded. And here was yet another skill he had: pleasing women.

Except his mother.

One rare morning, there was time to linger over breakfast at the government bungalow, and Leland and Emily sat in the window seat with cups of coffee. He had the current Motion Picture Magazine, and was annotating it with a pen. “Antonio Moreno is highly overrated,” he said.

The next article was about how to be your own publicity manager. It was written for actresses, but it had a tone that made Leland circle paragraph after paragraph.

If you have elected to become a vampire, don’t answer the doorbell in the flannel dressing-sack in which you have been darning your stockings. If you are the youngest star in motion pictures, send your granddaughter to the park on the day of your big interview. Do not under any consideration have the wonderful jewels given you by the deposed King of Honolulu stolen from your dressing-room. That is quite out of date and is rapidly being superseded by the lawsuit. A lawsuit is very effective and can be worked in so many ways and on any member of your family.