Young orphan Victoria Sax becomes a grand duchess and is summoned to a remote kingdom.

Michael Ramsay only has time for gathering his fortune in wheat. His wife seeks comfort elsewhere and, to avoid a scandal, her daughter Matilda assumes her mother's guilt. Ramsay nearly goes broke but gets rich again; his wife returns.

Yvonne von Krutz, a Belgian, lives with her German husband Karl, whom she was forced to marry, and her spirited little brother Jacques in a farmhouse on the Belgian countryside. With the German invasion of Belgium, Karl joins the German forces, and Jacques is taken to a reformatory to be trained as a munitions worker. When Karl is taken prisoner, Capt. Jefferson Strong, an American engineer, assumes the German's identity and discovers an underground supply of explosives near the von Krutz farm. By means of a tunnel, the Americans plan to mine the explosives. To save Jacques and a group of children from the munitions factory, however, Jefferson sends them across the American lines through the tunnel, but they lose their way, and he is forced to disable the mine. Jefferson is court-martialed, but King Albert of Belgium, who has befriended little Jacques, intercedes on his behalf. Learning that Karl has been killed, Jefferson pursues his budding romance with Yvonne.

Though betrothed to fellow socialite Richard, Iris weds her chauffeur Tom leaving Richard to marry the family laundress' daughter Shamrock. Class differences lead to divorces and remarriages.

Wealthy cripple Markley finances the education of blacksmith's daughter Ruth. When she returns to their small town he asks to marry her, but she runs off with city worker Jim Dirk who is then killed in a subway accident. Markley offers to marry her in name only to protect her new son.

Socialite Anatol Spencer, finding his relationship with his wife lackluster, goes in search of excitement. After bumping into old flame Emilie, he lets an apartment for her only to find that she cheats him. He is subsequently robbed, conned, and booted from pillar to post. He decides to return to his wife and discovers her carousing with his best friend Max.

Mary Maddock works as a seamstress to bring home money while her husband Steve, unemployed, has no real prospects of earning money. Mary's employers, are trying to strike an oil related business deal with a rich man by the name of Nelson Rogers. The deal does not seem to be on the table, as Mr. Rogers is leaving town shortly and does not have the time to work out the details of such a deal. In an order to entice him to stay, Mrs. Mallory - wife of Mr. Mallory who is proposing the business deal - convinces Mary to be her guest at a dinner party with the intent of making Mr. Rogers fall for her and thus stay long enough for Mr. Mallory to make him agree to a business deal.

Leila Porter comes to dislike her husband James, a glue king who is always eating onions and looking sloppy. But after she divorces him and marries two-timing playboy Schuyler Van Sutphen the now-reformed James looks pretty good.

A young American has her ship torpedoed by a German U-boat but makes it back to her ancestral home in France, where she witnesses German brutality firsthand.

Two wannabe bandits join the service of a dashing nobleman, who secretly masquerades as Fra Diavolo, a notorious outlaw.