Arden Pictures

After a chance encounter on the DC metro, Ryan and Julisa spend the next twenty-four hours discussing their hopes, dreams, and fears. Slowly but surely, they reveal more and more about themselves, and fall in love.

In the Blue Ridge Mountains Postmaster's daughter Sally Haston loves Steve Carey, but wants him to enlist and fight the Germans during the Great War. Steve is unhappy at the training camp Steve argues with his roughneck tentmate Billy Murphy. When Steve deserts to visit Sally she takes him back to the camp, where Captain Roderick Brooke sympathetically explains the purpose of the war. Later, moonshiner James Grogan holes up with a gun to escape the draft and holds Sally prisoner. Her father organizes a posse, but Steve, home on leave, rescues her and announces that he is leaving for Europe to fight for democracy.