In Edinburgh in 1831, Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane runs a medical school where Donald Fettes is a student. Fettes is interested in helping a young girl who has lost the use of her legs. He is certain that MacFarlane's surgical skills could be put to great use but he is reluctant to do so. The good Dr. MacFarlane has a secret that soon becomes all too obvious to young Fettes, who has only recently been promoted as his assistant: he has been paying a local cabbie, John Gray, to supply him with dead bodies for anatomical research. Gray constantly harasses MacFarlane and clearly has a hold over him dating to a famous trial many years before where Gray refused to identify the man for whom he was robbing graves. Fettes isn't aware of any of this but soon realizes exactly how Gray obtains the bodies they use in their anatomy classes.

Ten people are invited for a weekend on an island by a Mr U. N. Own, but he isn't on the island. At dinner a record is played, by that all the people are accused of murder, suddenly the first of them is dead, then the next... It seems to be that one of them is the murderer Mr. U. N. Own, but the person in suspect is always the person who is murdered next. At last only two people seem to be left.

In this final installment of the "Why We Fight" propaganda series, the subject focuses on the United States of America. We learn of its good qualities and the things worth fighting for. With that established, we learn of the history of the United States' population shifting opinion towards siding with the Allies against the Axis until the attack on Pearl Harbour which brought America into full scale involvement in the war.

George Harvey Bone is a composer in early 20th century London, who is under stress because he is writing a piano concerto. Due to this stress, he gets black outs when ever he hears dissonances. When he finds himself after the black out in a different quarter of the town, he returns home, to read in the paper that somebody in that quarter was murdered. Asking help from a doctor at Scotland Yard he is assured that he has nothing to do with it, but he is advised to cut back in his work and get some relaxation like other, ordinary people. At a cheap musical he meets Netta, a singer, who inspires him for a new motive for his concerto. But Netta discovers that this motive could also be used as a song for her. The song gets sold, and she hangs around George to get more songs out of him. George believes that Netta is in love with him, and gets in an argument with his girlfriend Barbara, the daughter of Lord Henry, who wants the concerto for one of his soirées. George has another black out, ...

Hélène understands that Jean doesn't love her anymore. She is full of grief and anger, and she starts brooding on revenge. When she meets Jean, she pretends herself to be the one that has ceased to love the other. Jean is relieved, because now he thinks they can part as friends. Hélène goes to a night club, where a young woman, Agnès, is a famous dancer. Agnés has been forced into this life of debauchery and courtesanship because of poverty. She hates it and all the lecherous men. Hélène has met Agnès and her mother several years ago, and after the show she looks them up. She says that she will help them to leave this degrading life. The next day they shall move to an apartment she has rented, and stay there anonymously. Some days later she arranges a seemingly spontaneous meeting between Jean and Agnès in the Bois de Boulogne. Jean immediately falls in love with Agnès, who he thinks is an innocent girl from the countryside. Fueled by Hélène, and by Agnès's resistance, his infatuation...

When a man asks another man more facile with words to do his wooing for him, there are always complications. The man with no talent for writing marries the girl, confesses one night he didn't write the letters and ends up with a knife in his back. The writer of the letters fell in love with the woman he wrote to and wants to become her second husband even if she did murder husband number one. Singleton doesn't remember the murder or anything about the first 22 years of her life as Victoria Remington. Then at her second wedding she wonders why she said "I take you, Roger," instead of "I take you, Alan."

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of PT-boat crews in the Philipines must battle the Navy brass between skirmishes with the Japanese. The title says it all about the Navy's attitude towards the PT-boats and their crews.