And then the final trial, the last tragic test--the women are equal to that also. First, the letter in the large envelope from the War Office: “Dear Madam, the Secretary of State regrets to inform you that Lieutenant So-and-So is reported killed in action on... Lord Kitchener begs to offer you...” And then, a little later, from the royal palace: “The King and Queen send you their most sincere....” Oh, if she could only go out to the place where they have laid... But then the Lord will know where to find His Own! Somebody in Paris said the other day, “No one will ever make our women cry any, more--after the war.” All the springs of their tears will be dry. THE NEW SCARLET LETTER It is brave in a man to face death on the battlefield, instantaneous death, or, what is worse, death after long suffering, after lying between trenches, perhaps, on the “no-man’s ground” which neither friend nor foe can reach, grasping the earth in agony, seeing the dark night coming on, and then dying in the cold shiver of the dawn. Yes, it is brave in a man to face death like that. But perhaps it is even braver in a woman to face life, with three or four fatherless children to provide for, on nothing but the charity of the State. Then battle is in the blood of man, and the heroic part falls to him by right, but it is not in the blood of woman, who shrinks from it and loathes it, and yet such is her nature, the fine and subtle mystery of it, that she flies to the scene of suffering with a bravery which far out-strips that of the man-at-arms. On the breasts that have borne tens of thousands of the sons who have fallen in this war the Red Cross is now enshrined. It is the new scarlet letter--the badge not of shame, but glory. And “through the rolling of the drums” and the thundering of the guns a voice comes to us in this year of service and sacrifice whose message no one can mistake. Woman, who faces death every time she brings a man-child into the world, must henceforth know what is to be done with him. It is her right, her natural right, and the part she has taken in this war has proved it. AND... AFTER? Such is the drama of the war as I have seen it. How far it has gone, when it will close and the curtain fall on it none of us can say. With five millions already dead, twice as many wounded, one kingdom in ruins, another desolate from disease, the larger part of Europe under arms, civil life paralysed, social existence overshadowed by a mourning that enters into nearly every household; with a war still in progress compared with which all other wars sink into insignificance; with a public debt which Pitt, Fox, and Burke (who thought £240,000,000 frightful) would have considered certain to sink the ship of State; with taxation such as our fathers never conceived possible--what will be our condition when this hideous war comes to an end?