At the officers' headquarters, one night after returning from the front, several officers were recounting to us their dramatic experiences. Many harrowing tales were told. During the winter of 1915, in the trenches at the foot of Vimy Ridge, several English officers and a French captain were down in a safety cellar having their pipes together and recounting the events of the day. Rain was falling and they delayed their stay. Finally the moment came to return to their trenches above. At that moment an English sentinel exclaimed: "One week from to-day and I will be home in England with my wife and baby. One more week! The next seven days seem to me like seven eternities." The English captain congratulated the boy, saying, "In two months my permission will come and I will have eight days home with my family." Then the English officer noticed the French officer's agitation. Turning to him, the English captain exclaimed, "And when do you go, Captain?" "When do I go home," exclaimed the Frenchman bitterly, "when do I go home? You Englishmen do not understand! Your land has never been invaded. Go home! To what could I go? The Germans have been in my land for a year. My little town is gone, quite gone. My little house is gone, and gone my little shop! My wife is still a young woman! My little girl,--she is just a little, little girl! Why, I never thought of her as a woman! And now our priest writes me that my young wife and my little girl will have babes in two months by these brutes!" And then the storm broke. The Frenchman beat his head upon the rude table, while the two Englishmen fled into the rain and night, knowing that the rain was nothing against those tears of pain, for that man's hopes were dead forever. That lieutenant's only task was to recover France and then transfer all his ambitions to God in Heaven. Such devastations of the soul are why there must be no inconclusive peace. Unconditional surrender is the only word. Whether this war goes on one year or five years it must go on until the Hun repents and makes restitution--so far as possible. Alas, a myriad of these German outrages are irremediable! Thoughtful men doubt whether the German will ever learn the wickedness of his own atrocities and the crimes of militarism until his own land is laid waste, until he sees the horrors of war with his own eyes, and hears the groans of his own people with his own ears, sees his own land laid desolate, finds his own heart crushed under anguish. Yet retribution in kind would be unthinkable for the Allies! THE FOUL CRIME AGAINST WOMEN