How often we have seen such shells as these!--and how little have we associated the familiar name of “shell” with any thought of war or “shock” or bloodshed! Holding a sea-shell close against our ears we listen in fancy to the solemn music of the ocean surging through its hollow cavity,--the ocean with its sweeping thunderous harmony,--though all the time we know it is but the sound of our own life-blood pouring through our veins and pulsing upon our senses. And now, when we talk of “shells,” we mean something vastly different to the “small and pure as a pearl” object which moved a great Poet to song--for the “pure” thing was the work of God, and “a miracle of design” wrought to suit the needs of the “little living will that made it stir on the shore”; but the “shells” _we_ have to do with are man’s work, made to destroy all living wills that come in contact with them! In their terrific way they too are “miracles of design,” for their cavities hold death and scatter it broadcast. Still more wonderful it is to realise the fact that women’s hands have been taught and trained to prepare this flying death--women’s hands, surely formed by nature for tenderness and caressing, for soothing and consoling! How, then, has it chanced that they should adapt themselves to such dire uses? Why do they labour so strenuously and eagerly to make weapons for the armoury of the King of Terrors? Women’s hands! What charming and poetic things have been said and written about them! Think of the hands in Fra Angelico’s picture of the “Angel of the Annunciation” where the dainty tapering fingers are as exquisitely delicate as the buds of the lilies they hold! Or, recall the subtle beauty of Heine’s description of the hand of an unknown lady, resting white and beautiful on the carved edge of a confessional in a dark cathedral aisle, the owner of the hand being too enshrouded in shadows to be visible. “So still and pure was that lovely hand,” wrote the poet, “that whatever sins its mistress might be admitting to her confessor, it was evident that of itself it had nothing to do with sin or folly. It was a stainless sweetness alone and apart, and shone in the gloom of the vast cathedral like a sculptured ivory emblem of innocence.”