The Craigs and Smiths, next-door neighbors, are the best of friends until Smith builds a chicken house. Their two gardens are connected and their children fraternize as if all belonged to one large family. Sidney Craig manages to set loose Smith's chickens, who get into Craig's garden and work havoc among his pet seedlings.

A screen adaptation of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem.

Bobbie Walters, a cab driver in a Midwest city who is trying to save enough money to marry his sweetheart, Dorothy Wright, an attendant at the cigar and newspaper counter of a large hotel, is able to amass $15,000. He acts like a millionaire and soon is fleeced of the money by two Wall Street swindlers. Broke, Bobbie is forced to work as a bellboy at Dorothy's hotel. After a series of struggles and adventures, Bobby wins a fortune in the oil fields of Louisiana, despite the efforts of his rivals, who dynamite his oil derricks.

The film is based on a book of the same name by Arthur Guy Empey, detailing his service as an American volunteer with the British Army on the Western Front.

Although deeply in love with his wife, Smith is intensely jealous of her and when she receives a note from her cousin, Tom, to the effect that they have decided to give the melodrama, "The Wicked Earle," as a surprise to Mr. Smith on his birthday.

Joan, a refined young Salvation Army volunteer, fall in love with a gangster.

Jack Duncan returns from the war in France to his wife and baby and learns that his job as a draftsman at the Loring Steel Mills has been taken. Given work in the machine shop, Jack becomes the prey of Red agitators who want him because of his popularity with soldiers. The Reds cause Jack's discharge just when his house payments come due, and when they convince him of the injustice of his situation, he joins their ranks. After learning of plans to burn the factory and Loring's home, and start a riot in the town, Jack is won over by a socialist's arguments advocating mild reforms. At a meeting of workingmen, Jack praises Americanism. He warns Loring and, with soldiers at a nearby camp, quells the riot. After a woman agitator kills her comrades and then shoots herself, Jack arrives home to save his wife from an attack by a Red ringleader. Jack is then made a foreman at the mill.

Enemy agents under the leadership of "Emanon" conspire with pacifists to keep the American defense appropriations down at a time when forces of the enemy are preparing to invade. The invasion comes, and New York, Washington, and other American cities are devastated.

Captain "Wolf" Larsen, the absolute master of a seal schooner, is a mystic and philosopher, though he rules his men with an iron hand. On a ferry going from San Francisco to Oakland, Van Weyden, a critic, and Maud Brewster, a novelist, meet in masquerade costumes and are forced overboard when their boat collides with a steamer. Humphrey, then Maud, are picked up by Larsen's crew. Because of her costume, Maud is taken for a boy and placed in the custody of Mugridge, the cook, who attempts to attack her upon discovering her identity. Larsen takes her under his protection and decides to marry her; but as the ceremony begins, the crew mutinies, and Larsen is stricken with blindness as he faces the rebels. The ship is set afire, and though Humphrey and Maud are rescued by another steamer, Larsen, deserted by his crew, refuses to quit his ship and is enveloped in flames.

Leslie Brennan, an heiress, suddenly discovers that she is almost penniless, and faces the ordeal of making her own living.