Still, spring is here, and in spite of one's self, it helps. XI May 18, 1915 All through the month of April I intended to write, but I had not the courage. All our eyes were turned to the north where, from April 22 to Thursday, May 13--five days ago--we knew the second awful battle at Ypres was going on. It seems to be over now. What with the new war deviltry, asphyxiating gas--with which the battle began, and which beat back the line for miles by the terror of its surprise--and the destruction of the Lusitania on the 7th, it has been a hard month. It has been a month which has seen a strange change of spirit here. I have tried to impress on you, from the beginning, that odd sort of optimism which has ruled all the people about me, even under the most trying episodes of the war. Up to now, the hatred of the Germans has been, in a certain sense, impersonal. It has been a racial hatred of a natural foe, an accepted evil, just as the uncalled-for war was. It had wrought a strange, unexpected, altogether remarkable change in the French people. Their faces had become more serious, their bearing more heroic, their laughter less frequent, and their humor more biting. But, on the day, three weeks ago, when the news came of the first gas attack, before which the Zouaves and the Turcos fled with blackened faces and frothing lips, leaving hundreds of their companions dead and disfigured on the road to Langtmarck, there arose the first signs of awful hatred that I had seen. I frankly acknowledge that, considering the kind of warfare the world is seeing today, I doubt very much if it is worse to be asphyxiated than to be blown to pieces by an obus. But this new and devilish arm which Germany has added to the horrors of war seemed the last straw, and within a few weeks, I have seen grow up among these simple people the conviction that the race which planned and launched this great war has lost the very right to live; and that none of the dreams of the world which looked towards happiness can ever be realized while Prussia exists, even if the war lasts twenty years, and even if, before it is over, the whole world has to take a hand in it. Into this feeling, ten days ago, came the news of the destruction of the Lusitania. We got the news here on the 8th. It struck me dumb. For two or three days I kept quietly in the house. I believe the people about me expected the States to declare war in twenty-four hours. My neighbors who passed the gate looked at me curiously as they greeted me, and with less cordiality as the days went by. It was as if they pitied me, and yet did not want to be hard on me, or hold me responsible.