me for. But it
must be noble. A soldier! The very name, from childhood, is one to
make a girl thrill. What then the actual thing, the uniform,
invested somehow with chivalry and courage, the clean-cut athletic
young man, somber and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious
brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of
him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to
privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of
war, to blood and agony and death--in a word to fight, fight, fight
for women!... So through this beautiful emotion women lose their
balance and many are misunderstood. Those who would not and could
not be bold are susceptible to advances that in an ordinary time
would not affect them. War invests a soldier with a glamour. Love at
first sight, flirtations, rash intimacies, quick engagements,
immediate marriages. The soldier who is soon going away to fight and
perhaps to die strikes hard at the very heart of a girl. Either she
is not her real self then, or else she is suddenly transported to a
womanhood that is instinctive, elemental, universal for the future.
She feels what she does not know. She surrenders because there is an
imperative call to the depths of her nature. She sacrifices because
she is the inspiritor of the soldier, the reward for his loss, the
savior of the race. If women are the spoils of barbarous conquerors,
they are also the sinews, the strength, the soul of defenders.

And so, however you look at it, war means for women sacrifice,
disillusion, heartbreak, agony, doom. I feel that so powerfully that
I am overcome; I am sick at the gaiety and playing; I am full of
fear, wonder, admiration, and hopeless pity for them.

No man can tell what is going on in the souls of soldiers while
noble women are offering love and tenderness, throwing themselves
upon the altar of war, hoping blindly to send their great spirits
marching to the front. Perhaps the man who lives through the war
will feel the change in his soul if he cannot tell it. Day by day I
think I see a change in my comrades. As they grow physically
stronger they seem to grow spiritually lesser. But maybe that is
only my idea. I see evidences of fear, anger, sullenness, moodiness,
shame. I see a growing indifference to fatigue, toil, pain. As these