c
statement, in view of the rumors now current, and
yourselves demand the fullest public investigation
of the facts, there can be but one issue. Your
good names will be cleared; the truth will
prevail. Dreadful as this prospect must be for you
both, it now seems to me--and let me add, to
Jimmy--the one wise course for you to take. But
only you, if you agree with me, can persuade Hunt
to such a course...."

It is unnecessary to quote the remaining paragraphs of Phil's so
characteristic letter.

* * * * *

No doubt Susan would have returned immediately if she could, but, less
than a week after the receipt of Phil's letter, the diplomatic flurry in
Europe had taken a German army through Luxemburg and into Belgium, and
within less than two weeks Susan and Mona Leslie and the Comtesse de
Bligny were in uniform, working a little less than twenty-four hours a
day with the Belgian Red Cross....

It is no purpose of mine to attempt any description of Susan's war
experience or service. Those first corroding weeks and months of the war
have left ineffaceable scars on the consciousness of the present
generation. I was not a part of them, and can add nothing to them by
talking about them at second hand. It might, however, repay you to
read--if you have not already done so--a small anonymous volume which
has passed through some twenty or thirty editions, entitled _Stupidity
Triumphant_, and containing the brief, sharply etched personal
impressions of a Red Cross nurse in Flanders during the early days of
Belgium's long agony. It is now an open secret that this little book was
written by Susan; and among the countless documents on frightfulness
this one, surely, by reason of its simplicity and restraint, its entire
absence of merely hysterical outcry, is not the least damning and not--I
venture to believe--the least permanent.

There is one short paragraph in this book of detached pictures, marginal
notes, and condensed reflections that brought home to me, personally,
_war_, the veritable thing itself, as no other written lines were able
to do--as nothing was able to do until I had seen the beast with my own
eyes. It is not an especially striking paragraph, and just why it should
have done so I am unable to say. Certain extracts from the book have
been widely quoted--one even, I am told, was read out in Parli