the massed Prussians had rolled
in fire and blood over his fair small land. Wherefore, hail and
farewell, young hero!

* * * * *

But upon whom falls the stress of war?

In a time of barbarism those who suffer are always the weak. War is in
its essence (as said Nietzsche, the German philosopher of "world power")
an attack upon weakness. The weakest suffer most.

I saw children born on cinder heaps, and I saw them die; and the mothers
die gasping like she dogs in a smother of flies.

Some day the story of what was done in Alsace will be written and the
stories of Vise and Aerschot and Onsmael and Louvain will seem pale and
negligible; but not now--five generations to come will whisper them in
the Vosges.

What I would emphasize is that in the natural state of barbarism induced
by the war the woman falls back to her antique state of she animal. In
thousands of years she has been made into a thing of exquisite and
mysterious femininity; in a day she is thrown back to kinship with the
she dog. Slashed with sabres, pricked with lances, she is a mere thing
of prey.

Surely not the dear Countess and Baroness? Of course not. War is made
in the palaces, but it does not attack the palaces. The worth of every
nation dwells in the cottage; and it is upon the cottage that war works
its worst infamy. Go to Alsace and see.

Pillage, loot, incendiarism, "indemnity"--you can read that in the
records of the invasion of Belgium; that is war; it is all right if war
is to be, for all this talk of chivalrous consideration for foes and
regard for international law is all nonsense; necessity, as
Bethmann-Hollweg said, knows no law, and necessity has always been the
tyrant's plea; it is the business of a soldier to kill and terrify; if
he restricts his killing and terrifying he is a bad soldier and bad at
his work of barbarism; but--

There is a more sinister side to Europe's lapse into barbarism. The
women are paying too dear. And to make them pay dear is not really the
business of a soldier, not even a bad soldier. Yet the woman is paying,
God knows. A tragic payment.

IV.

AFTER BARBARISM, WHAT?

One morning at dawn--it was at Amberieu--I saw the long trains go by
carrying the German wounded and the German prisoners, who had been taken
in the battles of the Vosges. There were 2,400 taken on toward the
south. There were French nurses with the wounded. I saw water and fruit
and chocolate given