usan
said solemnly this morning, 'Mrs. Dr. dear, I think politics are too
strenuous for women.'"

31st December 1917

"Our fourth War Christmas is over. We are trying to gather up some
courage wherewith to face another year of it. Germany has, for the most
part, been victorious all summer. And now they say she has all her
troops from the Russian front ready for a 'big push' in the spring.
Sometimes it seems to me that we just cannot live through the winter
waiting for that.

"I had a great batch of letters from overseas this week. Shirley is at
the front now, too, and writes about it all as coolly and
matter-of-factly as he used to write of football at Queen's. Carl wrote
that it had been raining for weeks and that nights in the trenches
always made him think of the night of long ago when he did penance in
the graveyard for running away from Henry Warren's ghost. Carl's
letters are always full of jokes and bits of fun. They had a great
rat-hunt the night before he wrote--spearing rats with their
bayonets--and he got the best bag and won the prize. He has a tame rat
that knows him and sleeps in his pocket at night. Rats don't worry Carl
as they do some people--he was always chummy with all little beasts. He
says he is making a study of the habits of the trench rat and means to
write a treatise on it some day that will make him famous.

"Ken wrote a short letter. His letters are all rather short now--and he
doesn't often slip in those dear little sudden sentences I love so
much. Sometimes I think he has forgotten all about the night he was
here to say goodbye--and then there will be just a line or a word that
makes me think he remembers and always will remember. For instance
to-day's letter hadn't a thing in it that mightn't have been written to
any girl, except that he signed himself 'Your Kenneth,' instead of
'Yours, Kenneth,' as he usually does. Now, did he leave that 's' off
intentionally or was it only carelessness? I shall lie awake half the
night wondering. He is a captain now. I am glad and proud--and yet
Captain Ford sounds so horribly far away and high up. Ken and Captain
Ford seem like two different persons. I may be practically engaged to
Ken--mother's opinion on that point is my stay and bulwark--but I can't
be to Captain Ford!

"And Jem is a lieutenant now--won his promotion on the field. He sent
me a snap-shot, taken in his new uniform. He looked thin and
old--old--my boy-brother Jem. I can't forge