found than the conviction
they gave of new and vitalizing forces released in them. The timidities
with which their sex is supposedly encumbered had disappeared, and even
the possibility of a disaster at sea held no terrors for them. When the
sun fell down into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and the cabins
below were sealed--and thus become insupportable--they settled
themselves for the night in their steamer-chairs and smiled at the
remark of M. le Commissaire that it was a good "season" for submarines.
The moonlight filtered through the chinks in the burlap shrouding
the deck. About 3 a.m. the khaki-clad lawyer from Milwaukee became
communicative, the Red Cross ladies produced chocolate. It was the
genial hour before the final nap, from which one awoke abruptly at the
sound of squeegees and brooms to find the deck a river of sea water, on
whose banks a wild scramble for slippers and biscuit-boxes invariably
ensued. No experience could have been more socializing.

"Well, it's a relief," one of the ladies exclaimed, "not to be
travelling with half a dozen trunks and a hat-box! Oh, yes, I realize
what I'm doing. I'm going to live in one of those flimsy portable houses
with twenty cots and no privacy and wear the same clothes for months,
but it's better than thrashing around looking for something to do and
never finding it, never getting anything real to spend one's energy-on.
I've closed my country house, I've sublet my apartment, I've done with
teas and bridge, and I'm happier than I've been in my life even if I
don't get enough sleep."

Another lady, who looked still young, had two sons in the army. "There
was nothing for me to do but sit around the house and wait, and I
want to be useful. My husband has to stay at home; he can't leave his
business." Be useful! There she struck the new and aggressive note of
emancipation from the restricted self-sacrifice of the old order, of
wider service for the unnamed and the unknown; and, above all, for the
wider self-realization of which service is but a by-product. I recall
particularly among these women a young widow with an eager look in clear
grey eyes that gazed eastward into the unknown with hope renewed. Had
she lived a quarter of a century ago she might have been doomed to slow
desiccation. There are thousands of such women in France today, and to
them the great war has brought salvation.

From what country other than America could so many thousands of
pilgrims--ev