The novel begins with a meeting of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club in May 1936, seven years after the beginning of the Great Depression. The occasion for the meeting is a pair of speeches, which are to be given by Brigadier General Edgeways and Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch. Doremus Jessup, a Fort Beulah resident and the owner-editor of the Daily Informer is there to observe the event along with his friend and lover Lorinda Pike, who co-owns a tavern outside of Fort Beulah and is an ardent feminist.

Edgeways begins the meeting with a xenophobic speech advocating American isolationism and celebrating the glory of the United States. He is followed by Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch, a tireless anti-feminist and conservative activist, who advocates that women’s right to vote be taken away and that women should retake their rightful place in the home as mothers and homemakers.

Pike criticizes Gimmitch’s remarks; Gimmitch responds by arguing that Americans “need to be in a real war again, in order to learn Discipline! We don't want all this highbrow intellectuality, all this book-learning” (7). Gimmitch then eggs-on Edgeways, who recants his early remarks by advocating for war and expressing admiration for the Fascist regimes in Italy and Germany.