- Despite being disqualified for war service, a young man volunteers as a war correspondent and ends up performing heroically at the front anyway.
- When war was but a portentous rumor, "The Girl" was in the throes of mental battle involving a decision wherein two suitors dared to hope for acceptance, one "The Lawyer," the other "The Journalist." While she pondered, Lincoln signed the call to arms, and both responded in patriotic effort to enlist. The lawyer, who was accepted as a recruit, is granted a subtle opportunity to belittle the Journalist in the girl's eyes by penning a message of his going to the front, knowing the journalist was rejected because of a deformity to his hand. Embittered because of the lost opportunity, the journalist goes to his room; the lawyer meanwhile seeking the girl who listens to his valorous declaration and bids him win his spurs "and hope." Disappointed, without realizing conditions of the journalist not going to the front, she refuses to see him, believing be will not serve his country. The darkey delivers her message and the journalist returns in despair to his room where later he views from his window the departure of the soldiers. The lawyer is later promoted to first lieutenant and the girl receives the word by letter. Craving for love, the journalist gains admittance to her presence and again pleads his cause, but his excuse of the hand's deformity arouses only pity, the verbally told promotion likewise creating anguish because of his helplessness in being unable to strive for like honors at the front. The journalist seizes the opportunity to represent the press as a war correspondent which information he tells the girl as he bids her farewell. His going only elicits pity. Yet she has confidence in him and gives him a letter to the lawyer; a letter which tells him to hope for his reward on returning. The journalist is assigned to headquarters at the front where the fighting is most severe, and in which division the lawyer ranks as first lieutenant. Overcoming the temptation not to deliver to his rival the letter entrusted for delivery by the girl, the lawyer is located and made a happy recipient. Later, during the progress of a long siege of desperate fighting, the journalist ignores all efforts of safety and "covers" the details of battle in masterful style, the horrors of wartime strife being read by the girl back home. At the turning point of the prolonged battle, the lawyer is hurried to protect a dangerous position where the true test of courage takes place. The journalist, knowing the lawyer's command, is receiving the brunt of terrific strife, keeps his glasses to that part of the battlefield. The desperate Confederates, realizing the importance of gaining that particular strategic position, hurl their concerted force in effort to break the opposition, and the journalist is horrified to see the lawyer break from his command and seek safety in cowardly flight. As the lawyer's command falls back in leaderless confusion, the journalist catches the lawyer's mount, rallies the disorganized company into a furious charge and succeeds in driving back the Confederates and regaining the valuable position, which valorous work is believed to be engineered by the lawyer and his heroic command. The lawyer, who crawled away in hiding, sees the turn, and starts to rejoin his men, when the journalist and he meet. The journalist has received a severe wound in his deformed arm, and as he meets the lawyer he falls fainting. The lawyer has him removed to the field hospital, then resumes efforts of holding the position as the heaviest of the conflict changes to another part of the battlefield. The journalist, however, refuses surgical attention until he finishes the story of the battle; a story of heroism wherein he tells of the lawyer and his fighting men turning the tide of battle into a Federal victory of magnitude. As the last line is dashed off the journalist reels and falls. His mangled arm is amputated and he lies in stupor while back home the local papers ring with the valorous generalship of the lawyer and his heroic company. Proudly awaiting at the close of war the return of the lawyer, her ideal, the girl exhibits to him the local papers and voices her admiration, while in his silent room, bowed down in grief, is the journalist who "knows" the stump of an arm forever bars him from the love for which his soul yearns. Realizing the noble sacrifice of the man who forgot all in order to save him from disgrace in the eyes of the girl he loves, the lawyer's conscience revolts. He confesses all, then seeks out the sorrow-stricken journalist and tells him where there awaits a girl who knows all and who is tearfully watching to welcome the man who gave up his arm for another's cause. -- Moving Picture World synopsis
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