After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop it.
Set in a satirical vision of modern Britain, Hadrian is a young and ambitious civil servant who arranges to receive Greek lessons in preparation for a government promotion which will see him steer British economic policy throughout Greece.
A girl tends a garden planted with symbolic flowers: red roses for lust and white roses for love. Daddy Wisdom encourages the girl to cultivate the white roses instead of the red.
Accused of stealing the annual report of the Great Western Railroad Dick Olney is discharged though it was really the president’s secretary Hodges who took it to sell information to the opposition.
Upon hearing about a woman dubbed The Huntress because of her wild attention craving ways, Fleming Harcourt decides he can domesticate her and they marry.
Rube's and Ben's wives are waitresses. An art collector purchases a rare picture and the "picture pirate," representing himself as another collector, calls on the first collector.
Jim Blake, the playboy son of a New York millionaire, heads west to prove himself a man. He goes to work on his father's ranch in Wyoming, and eventually wins over the locals by turning the tables on a town bully and trying to collect damages from a railroad magnate, whose trains have killed many of the Blake ranch's cattle.
The plan is this: a foreign man of war is interned in the harbor. By blowing up this boat, Carney figures that strained relation existing between this country and warring nations will snap and the United States will be drawn into the conflict.