tears."

With what brave and silent hearts they face the sequel too! The mother
of Sub-Lieutenant So-and-So receives letters from him nearly every other
week. Such cheerful little pencil scribblings! "Dearest Mother, I have a
jolly comfortable dug-out now--three planks and a truss of straw, and I
sleep on it like a top." Or, perhaps, "You see they have sent me back to
the Base after six weeks under fire, and now I have a real, _real_ room,
and a real, _real_ bed!" The dear old darling! She puts her precious
letters on the mantelpiece for everybody to see, and laughs over them
all day long. But when night comes, and she is winding the clock before
going upstairs, thinking of the boy who not so long ago used to sleep on
her knees.... "Ah, me!"

And then the final trial, the last tragic test--the women are equal to
that also. First, the letter in the large envelope from the War
Office: "Dear Madam, the Secretary of State regrets to inform you that
Lieutenant So-and-So is reported killed in action on... Lord Kitchener
begs to offer you..." And then, a little later, from the royal palace:
"The King and Queen send you their most sincere...." Oh, if she could
only go out to the place where they have laid... But then the Lord will
know where to find His Own!

Somebody in Paris said the other day, "No one will ever make our women
cry any, more--after the war." All the springs of their tears will be
dry.

THE NEW SCARLET LETTER

It is brave in a man to face death on the battlefield, instantaneous
death, or, what is worse, death after long suffering, after lying
between trenches, perhaps, on the "no-man's ground" which neither friend
nor foe can reach, grasping the earth in agony, seeing the dark night
coming on, and then dying in the cold shiver of the dawn. Yes, it is
brave in a man to face death like that. But perhaps it is even braver in
a woman to face life, with three or four fatherless children to provide
for, on nothing but the charity of the State. Then battle is in the
blood of man, and the heroic part falls to him by right, but it is not
in the blood of woman, who shrinks from it and loathes it, and yet such
is her nature, the fine and subtle mystery of it, that she flies to
the scene of suffering with a bravery which far out-strips that of the
man-at-arms.

On the breasts that have borne tens of thousands of the sons who have
fallen in this war the Red Cross is now enshrined. It is the new scarlet
letter