Where's the man that does not feel Freedom as the common weal, Duty's sword the only steel Can the battle end? Comrades, chant in unison Creed the noblest 'neath the sun: "One for all and all for one," Till each foe be friend.

[signed] Robert Underwood Johnson



The Breaking Out of the Flags



It is April, And the snow lingers on the dark sides of evergreens; The grass is brown and soggy With only a faint, occasional overwash of green. But under the leafless branches The white bells of snowdrops are nodding and shaking Above their green sheaths. Snow, fir-trees, snowdrops—stem and flower— Nature offers us only white and green At this so early springtime. But man gives more.

Man has unfurled a Nation's flags Above the city streets; He has flung a striped and starry symbol of bright colors Down every curving way. Blossoms of War, Blossoms of Suffering, Strange beautiful flowers of the New Year: Flags!

Over door lintels and cornices, Above peaked gables and flat mansard-roofs Flutter the flags. The avenues are arcaded with them, The narrow alleys are bleached with stripes and stars. For War is declared, And the people gird themselves Silently—sternly— Only the flags make arabesques in the sunshine, Twining the red of blood and the silver of achievement Into a gay, waving pattern Over the awful, unflinching Destiny Of War.

The flags ripple and jar To the tramp of marching men, to the rumble of caissons over cobblestones. From seaboard to seaboard And beyond, across the green waves of the sea, They flap and fly. Men plant potatoes and click typewriters In the shadow of them, And khaki-clad soldiers Lift their eyes to the garish red and blue And turn back to their khaki tasks Refreshed.

America, The clock strikes. The spring is upon us, The seed of our forefathers Quickens again in the soil, And these flags are the small, early flowers Of the solstice of our Hope!

Thru suffering to Peace! Thru sacrifice to Security! Red stripes, Turn us not from our purpose, Lead us up as by a ladder To the deep blue quiet Wherein are shining The silver stars.

Soldiers, sailors, clerks, and office boys, Men, and Women—but not children, No! Not children! Let these march With their paper caps and toy rifles And feel only the panoply of War— But the others, Welded and forged, Seared, melted, broken, Molded without flaw, Slowly, faithfully pursuing a Purpose, A Purpose of Peace,

Even into the very flame of Death. Over the city, Over all the cities, Flutter flags. Flags of spring, Flags of burgeoning, Flags of fulfillment.

[signed] Amy Lowell



Our Day



London, April 20, 1917

It was the evening of our Day; that young April day when in the solemn vastness of St. Paul's were held the services to mark America's historic entrance into the Great World War. Across the mighty arch of the Chancel on either side hung the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack.

From the organ pealed those American songs to which half a century ago, in another war for Freedom, men marched to battle, and, even if by ways of defeat and death, to ultimate Victory. How many there were that April day for whom the sight of the Stars and Stripes was blurred with tears. How the familiar airs and simple words pained us with the memory of our distant homes. Perhaps for the first time we understood the solemn significance of this dedication to war of what we hardly knew was so unspeakably dear.

In the Crypt of St. Paul's, Mausoleum of England's greatest soldier and sailor heroes, their ashes rest who once fought and conquered. If it is given to those who have gone before to hear our human appeal, perhaps the immortal spirits of Nelson, of Wellington, of Kitchener, whose tragic fate is its unfulfilled destiny, may have rested like an inspiration on that kindred nation offering the sacrifice of all it holds most sacred to the cause of Divine Justice.

After the solemn benediction thousands streamed slowly out to mingle with the multitudes gathered before the great Entrance where Queen Anne in crown and scepter keeps majestic guard, and where in peaceful days doves flit and flutter down to peck at the grain strewn about her royal feet.

Stern and momentous times have passed over that old, gray Cathedral; times of a Nation's grief and a Nation's rejoicing. But of all such days, in its centuries of existence, none has been so momentous for the destiny of the Empire as that sunny April day. And yet—and yet—perhaps more touching, more solemn, even than the High Service at St. Paul's, that which stirred Americans even more who love England with only a lesser love, and made us realize as never before what America stands for, joint defender now of the new Civilization, was the silent symbol of her dedication to the Cause of Human Freedom, for all London to see and on which, seeing, to reflect. It was the symbol of that for which Statesmen who were also prophets, have lived and toiled.

It rose against the glowing West, never to be forgotten by those who saw it at the close of Our Day, for it marked the new Epoch.

Now at last "Let the dead Past bury its Dead."

Along Whitehall, down Parliament Street, and where towards the left Westminster Bridge spans its immortal river, stand the Houses of Parliament, their delicate tracery of stonework etched against the sunset sky.

Hurrying crowds, released from the day's toil, stopped here, as if by a common impulse, to gaze upwards, and, gazing in silent wonder, they saw such a sight as London has never seen before. On the highest pinnacle of the Victoria tower where the flag of another nation has never before shared its proud eminence there floated together from one flagstaff Old Glory and the Union Jack.

That was America's supreme consecration.

[signed] Annie E. Lane (Mrs. John Lane)



Pour La Patrie



They were brothers, Louis and Franois, standing in the presence of the Prussian commander, looking hopelessly into his cold, unsmiling eyes. For the third time in as many days he was bargaining with them for that which God had given them and they in turn had promised to France: their lives.

"Do not make the mistake of thinking that we exalt you for what you may call courage, or that your country will sing your praises," said the general harshly. "Your country will never know how or when you die. You have nothing to gain by dying, not even the credit of dying."

Franois allowed his hot, dry eyes to sweep slowly around the group. He was pale, his forehead wet.

"You are soldiers," said he, his voice low and steady. "Is there one among you who would do the thing we are asked to do? If there is one man here who will stand forth in the presence of his comrades and say that he would betray Germany as you are asking us to betray France,—if there is such a man among you, let him speak, and the,—then I will do what you ask of me."

A dozen pairs of hard implacable eyes returned his challenge. No man spoke. No man smiled.

"You do not even pretend," cried the little poilu. "well, I too am a soldier. I am a soldier of France. It is nothing to me that I day to-day or to-morrow, or that my country knows when or how. Take me out and shoot me," he shouted, facing the commander. "I am but one poor soldier. I am one of millions. What is my little life worth to you?"

"Nothing," said the commander. "Ten such as you would not represent the worth of one German soldier."

"We say not so over there," said Franois boldly, jerking his thumb in the direction of Pont-a-mousson.

And now for the first time the Prussians about him smiled.

"What is it, pray, that you do say over there?" inquired the general mockingly.

"That the worst of the Frenchmen is worth five of your best," said Franois, unafraid. Why should he be afraid to speak the truth? He was going to die.

"And one of your frog-eating generals is the equal of five of me, I suppose?" The commander's grim face relaxed into a smile. "That is good! Ha-ha! That is good!"

"So we say, excellency," said Franois simply. "Our Papa Joffre—ah, he is greater than all of you put in one."

The Prussian flushed. His piggish eyes glittered.

"Your Papa Joffre!" he scoffed.

"He is greater than the Kaiser,—though I die for saying it," cried the little poilu recklessly.

The commander turned his eyes from the white, impassioned face of Franois and looked upon the quivering, ghastly visage of the brother who stood beside him. The fire that glowed in the eyes of Franois was missing in those of Louis.

The grizzled Prussian smiled, but imperceptibly. What he saw pleased him. Louis, the big one, the older of the two, trembled. It was only by the supremest effort that he maintained a pitiable show of defiance. His face was haggard and blanched with fear; there was a hunted, shifty look in his narrowed eyes. The general's smile developed. It proffered comfort, consolation, encouragement.

"And you," he said, almost gently, "have not you profited by the reflections of your three days of grace? Are you as stubborn as this mule of a brother, this foolish lad who spouts even poorer French than I address to you?"

Franois shot a quick, appealing glance at his big brother's face. There were tiny rivulets of slaver at the corners of Louis's mouth.

"Louis!" he cried out sharply.

Louis lifted his sagging shoulders. "I have nothing to say," he said thickly, and with the set of his jaws Franois breathed deeply of relief.

"So!" said the general, shrugging his shoulders. "I am sorry. You are young to die, you two. To die on the field of battle,—ah, that is noble! To die with one's back to a wall, blindfolded, and to be covered with earth so loosely that starving dogs may scratch away to feast—But, no more. You have decided. You have had many hours in which to consider the alternative. You will be shot at daybreak."

The slight figure of Franois straightened, his chin went up. His thin, dirt-covered hands were tightly clenched.

"For France!" he murmured, lifting his eyes above the head of the Prussian.

A vast shudder swept over the figure of Louis, a hoarse gasp broke through his lips. The commander leaned forward, fixing him with compelling eyes.

"For France!" cried Franois again, and once more Louis lifted his head to quaver:

"For France!"

"Take them away," said the commander. "But stay! How old are you?" He addressed Franois.

"I am nineteen."

"And you?"

Louis's lips moved but no sound issued.

"My brother is twenty-one," said Franois, staring hard at Louis.

"He has a sweetheart who will grieve bitterly if he does not return for her caresses, eh? I thought so. Oh, you French! But she will soon recover. She will find another,—like that! So!" He snapped his fingers. "She will not wait long, my good Louis. Take them away!"

Louis's face was livid. His chin trembled, his lips fell apart slackly; he lowered his eyes after an instant's contact with the staunch gaze of his brother.

"You have until sunrise to change your minds," said the Prussian, turning on his heel.

"Sunrise," muttered Louis, his head twitching.

They were led from the walled-in garden and across the cobblestones of the little street that terminated in a cul de sac just above. Over the way stood the shattered remnants of a building that once had been pointed to with pride by the simple villagers as the finest shop in town. The day was hot. Worn-out German troopers sprawled in the shade of the walls, sound asleep, their mouths ajar,—beardless boys, most of them.

"Poor devils," said Franois, as he passed among them. He too was very young.

They were shoved through the wrecked doorway into the mortar-strewn ruin, and, stumbling over masses of dbris, came to the stone steps that led to the cellar below. Louis drew back with a groan. He had spent centuries in that foul pit.

"Not there—again!" he moaned. He was whimpering feebly as he picked himself up at the bottom of the steps a moment later.

"Dogs!" cried Franois, glaring upward and shaking his fist at the heads projecting into the turquoise aperture above. Far on high, where the roof had been, gleamed the brilliant sky. "Our general will make you pay one of these days,—our GREAT general!"

Then he threw his arms about his brother's shoulders and—cried a little too,—no in fear but in sympathy.

The trap door dropped into place, a heavy object fell upon it with a thud, and they were in inky darkness. There was no sound save the sobs of the two boys, and later the steady tread of a man who paced the floor overhead,—a man who carried a gun.

They had not seen, but they knew that a dead man lay over in the corner near a window chocked by a hundred tons of brick and mortar. He had died some time during the second century of their joint occupance of the black and must hole. On the 28th he had come in with them, wounded. It was now the 31st, and he was dead, having lived to the age of nine score years and ten! When they spoke to their guards at the beginning of the third century, saying that their companion was dead and should be carried away, the Germans replied:

"There is time enough for that," and laughed,—for the Germans could count the time by hours out there in the sunshine. But that is not why they laughed.

A hidden French battery in the wooded, rocky hills off to the west had for days kept up a deadly, unerring fire upon the German positions. Shift as he would, the commander could not escape the shells from those unseen, undiscovered guns. They followed him with uncanny precision. His own batteries had searched in vain, with thousands of shrieking shells, for the gadfly gunners. They could find him, but he could not find them. For every shell he wasted, they returned one that counted.

Three French scouts fell into his hands on the night of the 28th. Two of them were still alive. He had them up before him at once.

"On one condition will I spare your lives," said he. And that condition had been pounded into their ears with unceasing violence, day and night, by officers high and low, since the hour of their capture. It was a very simple condition, declared the Germans. Only a stubborn fool would fail to take advantage of the opportunity offered. The exact position of that mysterious battery,—that was all the general demanded in return for his goodness in sparing their lives. He asked no more of them than a few, truthful words.

They had steadfastly refused to betray their countrymen.

Franois could not see his brother, but now and then he put out a timid hand to touch the shaking figure. He could not understand. Why was it not the other way about? Who was he to offer consolation to the big and strong?

"Courage," he would say, and then stare hard ahead into the blackness. "You are great and strong," he would add. "It is I who am weak and little, Louis. I am the little brother."

"You have not so much to live for as I," Louis would mutter, over and over again.

Their hour drew near. "Eat this," persuaded Franois, pressing upon Louis the hunk of bread their captors had tossed down to them.

"Eat? God! How can I eat?"

"Then drink. It is not cold, but—"

"Let me alone! Keep away from me! God in heaven, why do they leave that Jean Picard down here with us—"

"You have seen hundreds of dead men, Louis. All of them were heroes. All of them were brave. It was glorious to die as they died. Why should we be afraid of death?"

"But they died like men, not like rats. They died smiling. They had no time to think."

And then he fell to moaning. His teeth rattled. He turned upon his face and for many minutes beat upon the stone steps with his clenched hands, choking out appeals to his Maker.

Franois stood. His hot, unblinking eyes tried to pierce the darkness. Tears of shame and pity for this big brother burnt their way out and ran down his cheeks. He was wondering. He was striving to put away the horrid doubt that was searing his soul: the doubt of Louis!

The dreary age wore on. Louis slept! The little brother sat with his chin in his hands, his heart cold, his eyes closed. He prayed.

Then came the sound of the heavy object being dragged away from the door at the top of the steps. They both sprang to their feet. An oblong patch of drab, gray light appeared overhead. Sunrise!

"Come! It is time," called down a hoarse voice. Three guns hung over the edge of the opening. They were taking no chances.

"Louis!" cried Franois sharply.

Louis straightened his gaunt figure. The light from above fell upon his face. It was white,—deathly white,—but transfigured. A great light flamed in his eyes.

"Have no fear, little brother," he said gently, caressingly. He clasped his brother's hand. "We die together. I have dreamed. A vision came to me,—came down from heaven. My dream was of our mother. She came to me and spoke. So! I shall die without fear. Come! Courage, little Franois. We are her soldier boys. She gave us to France. She spoke to me. I am not afraid."

Glorified, rejoicing, almost unbelieving, Franois followed his brother up the steps, there was comfort in the grip of Louis's hand.

"This general of yours," began Louis, facing the guard, a sneer on his colorless lips, his teeth showing, "he is a dog! I shall say as much to him when the guns are pointed at my breast."

The Germans stared.

"What has come over this one?" growled one of them. "Last night he was breaking."

"There is still a way to break him," said another, grinning. "Hell will be a relief to him after this hour."

"Canails!" snarled Louis, and Franois laughed aloud in sheer joy!

"My good,—my strong brother!" he cried out.

"This Papa Joffre of yours," said the burliest German,—"he is worse than a dog. He is a toad." He shoved the captives through the opening in the wall. "Get on!"

"The smallest sergeant in Germany is greater than your Papa Joffre," said another. "What is it you have said, baby Frenchman? One frog-eater is worth five Germans? Ho-ho! You shall see."

"I—I myself," cried Franois hotly,—"I am nobler, braver, greater than this beast you call master."

"Hold your tongue," said a third German, in a kindlier tone than the others had employed. "It can do you no good to talk like this. Give in, my brave lads. Tell everything. I know what is before you if you refuse to-day,—and I tremble. He will surely break you to-day."

They were crossing the narrow road.

"He is your master,—not ours," said Franois calmly.

Louis walked ahead, erect, his jaw set. The blood leaped in Franois' veins. Ah, what a brave, strong fellow his brother was!

"He is the greatest commander in all the German armies," boasted the burly sergeant. "And, young frog-eater, he commands the finest troops in the world. Do you know that there are ten thousand iron crosses in this God-appointed corps! Have a care how you speak of our general. He is the Emperor's right hand. He is the chosen man of the Emperor."

"And of God," added another.

"Bah!" cried Franois, snapping his fingers scornfully. "His is worth no more than that to me!"

Franois was going to his death. His chest swelled.

"You fool. He is to the Emperor worth more than an entire army corps,—yes, two of them. The Emperor would sooner lose a hundred thousand men than this single general."

"A hundred thousand men?" cried Franois, incredulously. "That is a great many men,—even Germans."

"Pigs," said Louis, between his teeth.

They now entered the little garden. The Prussian commander was eating his breakfast in the shelter of a tent. The day was young, yet the sun was hot. Papers and maps were strewn over the top of the long table at which he sat, gorging himself. The guard and the two prisoners halted a few paces away. The general's breakfast was not to be interrupted by anything so trivial as the affairs of Louis and Franois.

"And that ugly glutton is worth more than a hundred thousand men," mused Franois, eyeing him in wonder. "God, how cheap these boches must be."

Staff officers stood outside the tent, awaiting and receiving gruff orders from their superior. Between gulps he gave out almost unintelligible sounds, and one by one these officers, interpreting them as commands, saluted and withdrew.

Franois gazed as one fascinated. He WAS a great general, after all. Only a very great and powerful general could enjoy such respect, such servile obedience as he was receiving from these hulking brutes of men.

Directions were punctuated,—or rather indicated,—by the huge carving-knife with which the general slashed his meat. He pointed suddenly with the knife, and, as he did so, the officer at whom it was leveled, sprang into action, to do as he was bidden, as if the shining blade had touched his quivering flesh.

Suddenly the great general pushed his bench back from the table, slammed the knife and fork down among the platters, and barked:

"Well!"

His eyes were fastened upon the prisoners. The guards shoved them forward.

"Have you decided? What is it to be,—life or death?"

He was in an evil humor. That battery in the hills had found its mark again when the sun was on the rise.

"Vive la France!" shouted Louis, raising his eye to heaven.

"vive la France!" almost screamed Franois.

"So be it!" roared the commander. His gaze was fixed on Louis. There was the one who would weaken. Not that little devil of a boy beside him. He uttered a short, sharp command to an aide.

The torturing of Louis began....

"End it!" commanded the Prussian general after a while. "The fool will not speak!"

And the little of life that was left to the shuddering, sightless Louis went out with a sigh—slipped out with the bayonet as it was withdrawn from his loyal breast.

Turning to Franois, who had been forced to witness the mutilation of his brother,—whose arms had been held and whose eyelids were drawn up by the cruel fingers of a soldier who stood behind him,—he said:

"Now YOU! You have seen what happened to him! It is your turn now. I was mistaken. I thought that he was the coward. Are you prepared to go through even more than—Ah! Good! I thought so! The little fire-eater weakens!"

Franois, shaken and near to dying of the horror he had witnessed, sagged to his knees. They dragged him forward,—and one of them kicked him.

"I will tell! I will tell!" he screamed. "Let me alone! Keep your hands off of me! I will tell, God help me, general!"

He staggered, white-faced and pitiful, to the edge of the table, which he grasped with trembling, straining hands.

"Be quick about it," snarled the general, leaning forward eagerly.

Like a cat, Franois sprang. He had gauged the distance well. He had figured it all out as he stood by and watched his brother die.

His fingers clutched the knife.

"I will!" he cried out in an ecstasy of joy.

To the hasp sank the long blade into the heart of the Prussian commander.

Whirling, the French boy threw his arms on high and screamed into the faces of the stupefied soldiers:

"Vive la France! One hundred thousand men! There they lie! Ha-ha! I—I, Franois Dupr,—I have sent them all to hell! Wait for me, Louis! I am coming!"

The first words of the "Marseillaise" were bursting from his lips when his uplifted face was blasted—

He crumpled up and fell.

[signed] George Barr McCutcheon



Sonnet



Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no, Nor honeysuckle,—thou art not more fair Than small white single poppies,—I can bear Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though From left to right, not knowing where to go, I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.

Like him who day by day unto his draught Of delicate poison adds him one drop more Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten, Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed Each hour more deeply than the hour before, I drink,—and live—what has destroyed some men.

[signed] Edna St. Vincent Millay



The Idiot



I

The change was not affected without whispering. The spirit both of the troops who were going back of the lines to rest and of those who had zigzagged up through two miles of communication trenches to take their places was excellent.

"What is the name of this country?" asked one of the new comers.

"If it had a name, that is all that remains. We are somewhere in Picardy. The English are off there not very far. Their cannon have different voices from ours. Good Luck!"

His gray, faded uniform seemed to melt into the night. The New Comer stepped on to the firing platform and poked his head over the parapet. A comrade pulled at his trousers leg.

"Come down, Idiot," he said, "Fritz is only twelve yards away."

The Idiot came down, sniffing the night air luxuriously.

"We are somewhere in Picardy," he said. "I know without being told. It is like going home."

A sergeant approached, his body twisted sideways because the trench was too narrow for his shoulders.

"Have you a watch?"

The Idiot had.

Under his coat, so that the enemy should not perceive the glow, the sergeant flashed his electric torch and compared the watches.

"Yours leads by a minute," he said. "The advance will be at four o'clock. there will be hot coffee at three. Good luck."

He passed on, and the comrades drew a little closer together. The sergeant's words had made the Idiot very happy.

"In less than two hours!" he said.

"I thought there was something in the wind," said Paul Guitry.

"If we advanced only three kilometers," said the Idiot, "the village in which I was born would be French again. But there will be great changes."

"You were born at Champ-de-Fer?"

"It is directly opposite us."

"You cannot know that."

"I feel it," said the Idiot. "Wherever I have been stationed I have felt it. Sometimes I have asked an officer to look for Champ-de-Fer on his field map, and when he has done so, I have pointed, and said 'Is it in that direction?' and always I have been right."

"Did your family remain in the village?"

"I don't know. But I think so, for from the hour of the mobilization until now, I have not heard from them."

"Since the hour of the mobilization," said Paul Guitry, "much water has flowed under the bridges. I had just been married. My wife is in Paris. I have a little son now. I saw them when I had my eight days' leave. And it seems that again I am to be a father. It is very wonderful."

"I was going to be married," said the Idiot simply.

There was a short silence.

"If I had known," said Paul Guitry, "I would not have boasted of my own happiness."

"I am not the only French soldier who has not heard from his sweetheart since the mobilization," said the Idiot. "It has been hard," he said, "but by thinking of all the others, I have been able to endure."

"She remained there at Champ-de-Fer?"

"She must have, or else she would have written to me."

Paul Guitry could not find anything to say.

"Soon," said the Idiot, "we shall be in Champ-de-Fer, and they will tell me what has become of her."

"She will tell you herself," said Paul Guitry with a heartiness which he did not feel. The Idiot shrugged his shoulders.

"We have loved each other," he said, "even since we were little children. Do you know why I am called the Idiot? It is because I do not go with women, when I have the chance. But I don't mind. They cannot say that I am not a real man, for I have the military medal and I have been mentioned twice in the orders of the day."

To Paul Guitry, a confirmed sinner as opportunity offered, the Idiot's statement contained much psychic meat.

"It must be," he said, "that purity tempts some men, just as impurity tempts others."

"It is even simpler," said the Idiot; but he did not explain. And there was a long silence.

Now and then Paul Guitry glanced at his companion's profile, for the night was no longer inky black. It was a simple direct young face, not handsome, but full of dignity and kindness; the line of the jaw had a certain sternness, and the wide and delicately molded nostril indicated courage and daring.

Paul Guitry thought of his wife and of his little son, of his eight days' leave, and of its consequences. He tried to imagine how he would feel, if for two years his wife had been in the hands of the Germans. Without meaning to, he spoke his thought aloud:

"Long since," he said, "I should have gone mad."

The Idiot nodded.

"They say," he said, "that in fifty years all this will be forgotten; and that we French will feel friendly toward the Germans."

He laughed softly, a laugh so cold, that Paul Guitry felt as if ice water had suddenly been spilled on his spine.

"Hell," he went on, "has no tortures which French men, and women, and little children have not suffered. You say that if you had been in my boots you must long since have gone mad? well, it is because I have been able to think of all the others who are in my boots that I have kept my sanity. It has not been easy. It is not as if my imagination alone had been tortured. Just as I have the sense that my village is there—" he pointed with his sensitive hand, "so I have the sense of what has happened there. I KNOW that she is alive," he concluded, "and that she would rather be dead."

There was another silence. The Idiot's nostrils dilated and he sniffed once or twice.

"The coffee is coming," he said. "Listen. If I am killed in the advance, find her, will you—Jeanne Bergre? And say what you can to comfort her. It doesn't matter what has happened, her love for me is like the North Star—fixed. When she knows that I am dead she will wish to kill herself. You must prevent that. You must show her how she can help France. Aha!—The cannon!"

From several miles in the rear there rose suddenly a thudding percussive cataract of sound. The earth trembled like some frightened animal that has been driven into a corner.

The Idiot leaped to his feet, his eyes joyously alight.

"It is the voice of God," he cried.

If indeed it was the voice of God, that other great voice which is of Hell, made no answer. The German guns were unaccountably silent.

On the stroke of four, the earth still trembling with the incessant concussions of the guns, the French scrambled out of their trenches and went forward. But no sudden blast of lead and iron challenged their temerity. A few shells, but all from field pieces, fired perfunctorily as it were, fell near them and occasionally among them. It looked as if Fritz wasn't going to fight.

The wire guarding the first line of German trenches had been so torn and disrupted by the French cannon, that only here and there an ugly strand remained to be cut. The trench was empty.

"The Boche," said Paul Guitry, "has left nothing but his smell."

Rumor spread swiftly through the lines. "We are not to be opposed. Fritz has been withdrawn in the night. His lines are too long. He is straightening out his salients. It is the beginning of the end."

There was good humor and elation. There was also a feeling of admiration for the way in which Fritz had managed to retreat without being detected.

The country over which the troops advanced was a rolling desert, blasted, twisted, swept clear of all vegetation. What the Germans could not destroy they had carried away with them. There remained only frazzled stumps of trees, dead bodies and ruined engines of war.

Paul Guitry and the Idiot came at last to the summit of a little hill. Beyond and below at the end of a long sweep of tortured and ruined fields could be seen picturesquely grouped a few walls of houses and one bold arch of an ancient bridge.

The Idiot blinked stupidly. Then he laughed a short, ugly laugh.

"I had counted on seeing the church steeple. But of course they would have destroyed that."

"Is it Champ-de-Fer?" asked Guitry.

At that moment a dark and sudden smoke, as from ignited chemicals began to pour upward from the ruined village.

"It was," said the Idiot, and once more the word was passed to go forward.

II

They did not know what was going on in the world. They had been ordered into the cellars of the village, and told to remain there for twenty-four hours. They had no thought but to obey.

Into the same cellar with Jeanne Bergre had been herded four old women, two old men, and a little boy whom a German surgeon (the day the champagne had been discovered buried in the Notary's garden) had strapped to a board and—vivisected.

Twenty-three of the twenty-four hours had passed (one of the old men had a Waterbury watch) but only the little boy complained of hunger and thirst. He wanted to drink from the well in the corner of the cellar; but they would not let him. The well had supplied good drinking water since the days of Julius Caesar, but shortly after entering the cellar one of the old women had drunk from it, and shortly afterward had died in great torment. The little boy kept saying:

"But maybe it wasn't the water which killed Madame Pigeon. Only let me try it and then we shall know for sure."

But they would not let him drink.

"It is not agreeable to live," said one of the old men, "but it is necessary. We are of those who will be called upon to testify. The terms of peace will be written by soft-hearted statesmen; we who have suffered must be on hand. We must be on hand to see that the Boche gets his deserts."

Jeanne Bergre spoke in a low unimpassioned voice:

"What would you do to them, father," she asked, "if you were God?"

"I do not know," said the old man. "For I have experience only of those things which give them pleasure. Those who delight in peculiar pleasures are perhaps immune to ordinary pains...."

"Surely," interrupted the little boy, "it was not the water that killed Madame Pigeon."

"How peaceful she looks," said the old man. "You would say the stone face of a saint from the faade of a cathedral."

"It may be," said Jeanne Bergre, "that already God has opened His mind to her, and that she knows of that vengeance, which we with our small minds are not able to invent."

"I can only think of what they have done to us," said the old man. "It does not seem as if there was anything left for us to do to them. Vengeance which does not give the Avenger pleasure is a poor sort of vengeance. Madame Simon..."

The old woman in question turned a pair of sheeny eyes towards the speaker.

"Would it give you any particular pleasure to cut the breasts off an old German woman?"

With a trembling hand Madame Simon flattened the bosom of her dress to show that there was nothing beneath.

"It would give me no pleasure," she said, "but I shall show my scars to the President."

"An eye for an eye—a tooth for a tooth," said the old man. "That is the ancient law. But it does not work. There is no justice in exchanging a German eye and a French. French eyes see beauty in everything. To the German eye the sense of beauty has been denied. You cannot compare a beast and a man. In the old days, when there were wolves, it was the custom of the naive people of those days to torture a wolf if they caught one. They put him to death with the same refinements which were requisitioned for human criminals. This meant nothing to the wolf. The mere fact that he had been caught was what tortured him. And so I think it will be with the Germans when they find that they have failed. They have built up their power on the absurd hypothesis that they are men. Their punishment will be in discovering that they never were anything but low animals and never could be."

"That is too deep for me," said the other man. "They tied my daughter to her bed, and afterward they set fire to her mattress."

"I wish," said Jeanne Bergre, "that they had set fire to my mattress."

A violent concussion shook the cellar to its foundations. Even the face of the thirsty little boy brightened.

"It is one of ours," he said.

"To eradicate the lice which feed upon the Germans and the foul smells which emanate from their bodies there is nothing so effective as high explosives," said the old man. He looked at his watch and said:

"We have half an hour more."

At the end of that time, he climbed the cellar stair, pushed open the door, and looked out. Partly in the bright sunlight and partly in the deep shadows, he resembled a painting by Rembrandt.

"I see no one," he said. "There is a lot of smoke."

His eyes became suddenly wide open, fixed, round with a kind of celestial astonishment. This his old French heart stopped beating, and he fell to the foot of the stair. His companions thought that he must have been shot. They dared not move.

But it was no bullet or fragment of far-blown shell that had laid the old man low. He had seen in the smoke that whirled down the village street, a little soldier in the uniform of France. Pure unadulterated joy had struck him dead.

Five minutes passed, and no one had moved except the little boy. With furtive glances and trembling hands he had crept to the old well in the corner and drunk a cup of the poisoned water. Then he crept back to his place.

The second old man now rose, drew a deep breath and climbed the cellar stair. For a time he stood blinking, and mouthing his scattered teeth. He was trying to speak and could not.

"What is it?" they called up to him. "What has happened?"

He did not answer. He made inarticulate sounds, and suddenly with incredible speed, darted forward into the smoke and the sunlight.

A little hand cold and wet crept into Jeanne Bergre's. She was vexed. She wished to go out of the cellar with the others; but the little hand clung to her so tightly that she could not free herself.

Except for the old woman who had drunk from the well, and the old man, all in a heap at the foot of the cellar stair, they were alone. She and the little boy.

"It is true," said the little boy, "at least I think it is true about the water...when...nobody was looking.... Please, please stay with me, Jeanne Bergre."

"You drank when it was forbidden? That was very naughty, Charlie.... Good God, what am I saying—you poor baby—you poor baby." She snatched him into her arms, and held him with a kind of tigerish ferocity.

"It hurts," said Charlie. "It hurts. It hurts me all over. It hurts worse all the time."

"I will go for help," she said. "Wait."

"Please do not go away."

"You want to die?"

The child nodded.

"If I grow up, I should not be a man," he said. "You know what the doctor did to me?"

"I know," she said briefly, "but you shan't die if I can help it."

She could not help it. A few minutes after she had gone, his back strongly arched became rigid. His jaws locked and he died in the attitude of a wrestler making a bridge.

The village street was full of smoke and Frenchmen. These were methodically fighting the fires and hunting the ruins for Germans. Jeanne Bergre seized one of the little soldiers by the elbow.

"Come quickly," she said, "there is a child poisoned!"

The Idiot turned, and she would have fallen if he had not caught her. She tore herself loose from his arms with a kind of ferocity.

"Come! Come!" she cried, and she ran like a frightened animal back to the cellar door, the Idiot close behind her.

The Idiot knelt by the dead child, and after feeling in vain for any pulsation, straightened up and said:

"He is dead."

"He drank from the well," said Jeanne. "We told him that it was poisoned. But he was so thirsty."

They tried to straighten the little boy, but could not. The Idiot rose to his feet, and looked at her for the first time. He must have made some motion with his hands, for she cried suddenly:

"Don't! You mustn't touch me!"

"We have always loved each other," he said simply.

"You don't understand."

"What have you been through? I understand. Kiss me."

She held him at arm's length.

"Listen," she said. "The old people would not leave the village,—your father and mother...so I stayed. At that time it was still supposed that the Germans were human beings..."

"And my father and mother?" asked the Idiot.

"Some of the people went into the street to see the Germans enter the village. But we watched from a window in your father's house.... They were Uhlans, who came first. They were so drunk that they could hardly sit on their horses. Their lieutenant took a sudden fancy to Marie Lebrun, but when he tried to kiss her, she slapped his face.... That seemed to sober him.... Old man Lebrun had leapt forward to protect his daughter.

"'Are you her father?'" asked the Lieutenant.

"'Yes,'" said the old man.

"'Bind him,'" said the lieutenant, and then he gave an order and some men went into the house and came out dragging a mattress.... They dragged it into the middle of the street.... They held old man Lebrun so that he had to see everything...for some hours, as many as wanted to.... Then the lieutenant stepped forward and shot her through the head, and then he shot her father.... Your father and mother hid me in the cellar of their house, as well as they could.... But from the Germans nothing remains long hidden.... Your father and mother tried to defend me...tied them to their bed...and...set fire to the house."

The Idiot's granite-gray face showed no new emotion.

"And you?"

She shook her head violently.

"What you cannot imagine," she said. "I have forgotten.... There have been so many.... No street-walker has ever been through what I have been through.... There's nothing more to say...I wanted to live...to bear witness against them.... For you and me everything is finished..."

"Almost," said the Idiot. "You talk as if you no longer loved me."

The granite-gray of his face had softened into the ruddy, sun-burned coloring of a healthy young soldier, long in the field, and she could not resist the strong arms that he opened to her.

"They have not touched your soul," said the Idiot.

[signed] Gouverneur Morris



Memories of Whitman and Lincoln



"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd" —W. W.

Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln. Spring hangs in the dew of the dooryards These memories—these memories— They hang in the dew for the bard who fetched A sprig of them once for his brother When he lay cold and dead.... And forever now when America leans in the dooryard And over the hills Spring dances, Smell of lilacs and sight of lilacs shall bring to her heart these brothers.... Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Who are the shadow-forms crowding the night? What shadows of men? The stilled star-night is high with these brooding spirits— Their shoulders rise on the Earth-rim, and they are great presences in heaven— They move through the stars like outlined winds in young-leaved maples. Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Deeply the nation throbs with a world's anguish— But it sleeps, and I on the housetops Commune with souls long dead who guard our land at midnight, A strength in each hushed heart— I seem to hear the Atlantic moaning on our shores with the plaint of the dying And rolling on our shores with the rumble of battle.... I seem to see my country growing golden toward California, And, as fields of daisies, a people, with slumbering up-turned faces Leaned over by Two Brothers, And the greatness that is gone.

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Spring runs over the land, A young girl, light-footed, eager... For I hear a song that is faint and sweet with first love, Out of the West, fresh with the grass and the timber, But dreamily soothing the sleepers... I listen: I drink it deep.

Softly the Spring sings, Softly and clearly: "I open lilacs for the beloved, Lilacs for the lost, the dead. And, see, for the living, I bring sweet strawberry blossoms, And I bring buttercups, and I bring to the woods anemones and blue bells... I open lilacs for the beloved, And when my fluttering garment drifts through dusty cities, And blows on hills, and brushes the inland sea, Over you, sleepers, over you, tired sleepers, A fragrant memory falls... I open love in the shut heart, I open lilacs for the beloved."

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Was that the Spring that sang, opening locked hearts, And is remembrance mine? For I know these two great shadows in the spacious night, Shadows folding America close between them, Close to the heart... And I know how my own lost youth grew up blessedly in their spirit, And how the morning song of the might bard Sent me out from my dreams to the living America, To the chanting seas, to the piney hills, down the railroad vistas, Out into the streets of Manhattan when the whistles blew at seven, Down to the mills of Pittsburgh and the rude faces of labor... And I know how the grave great music of that other, Music in which lost armies sang requiems, And the vision of that gaunt, that great and solemn figure, And the graven face, the deep eyes, the mouth, O human-hearted brother, Dedicated anew my undevoted heart to America, my land.

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Now in this hour I was suppliant for these two brothers, And I said: Your land has need: Half-awakened and blindly we grope in the great world.... What strength may we take from our Past, What promise hold for our future?

And the one brother leaned and whispered: "I put my strength in a book, And in that book my love... This, with my love, I give to America..." And the other brother leaned and murmured: "I put my strength in a life, And in that life my love, This, with my love, I give to America."

Lilacs bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

Then my heart sang out: This strength shall be our strength: Yea, when the great hour comes, and the sleepers wake and are hurled back, And creep down into themselves There shall they find Walt Whitman And there, Abraham Lincoln.

O Spring, go over this land with much singing And open the lilacs everywhere, Open them out with the old-time fragrance Making a people remember that something has been forgotten, Something is hidden deep—strange memories—strange memories— Of him that brought a sprig of the purple cluster To him that was mourned of all... And so they are linked together While yet America lives... While yet America lives, my heart, Lilacs shall bloom for Walt Whitman And lilacs for Abraham Lincoln.

[signed] James Oppenheim



Bred to the Sea



Ye who are bred to the sea, sons of the sons of seamen, In what faith do ye sail? By what creed do ye hold? Little we know of faiths, and we leave the creeds to the parsons. But we 'bide by the law of the sea which our father made of old.

Where is that sea law writ for mariners and for captains, That they may know the law by which they sail the sea? We never saw it writ for sailormen or for masters; But 'tis laid with the keel of the ship. What would you have? Let be.

Ye who went down tot he sea in ships and perished aforetime, In what faith did ye sail? In what creed did ye die? What is that law to which your lives were forfeit? What do ye teach your sons that they may not deny?

We kept the faith of our breed. We died in the creed of seamen, As our sons, too, shall die: the sea will have its way. The law which bade us sail with death in smack and whaler, In tall ship and in open boat, is the seaman's law to-day.

The master shall rule his crew. The crew shall obey the master. Ye shall work your ship while she fleets and ye can stand. Though ye starve, and freeze, and drown, shipmate shall stand by shipmate. Ye shall 'bide by this law of seafaring folk, though ye never come to land.

Ye shall hold your lives in trust for those who need your succor: A flash of fire by night, a loom of smoke by day, A rag to an oar shall be to you the symbol Of your faith, of your creed, of the law which sailormen obey.

Ye shall not count the odds, ye shall not weigh the danger, When life is to be saved from storm, from fire, from thirst. Ye shall not leave your foe adrift and helpless; And when the boats go overside, 't is, "Women and children first."

We kept this faith of our breed. We died in this creed of seamen. We sealed our creed with our lives. It shall endure alway. The law which bade us sail with death in smack and whaler, In tall ship and in open boat, is the seaman's law to-day.

[signed] James W. Pryor.



Our Defenders

Across the fields of waving wheat And leagues of golden corn The fragrance of the wild-rose bloom And elder-flower is borne; But earth's appealing loveliness We do but half surmise, For oh, the blur of battle-fields Is ever in our eyes.

The robin-red-breast and the wren, We cannot harken these For dreadful thunder of the guns That echoes overseas; And evermore our vision turns To those who follow far The bright white light of Liberty Through the red fires of war.

Our thoughts are with the hero souls And hero hearts of gold Who keep Old Glory's hallowed stars Untarnished as of old; Who join their hands with hero hands In hero lands to save The fearless forehead of the free The shameful brand of slave.

And through these days of strife and death, We know they shall not fail, That Freedom shall not pass from earth Nor tyranny prevail; Yea, those that now in anguish bow, We know that soon or late They shall be lifted from beneath The iron heel of hate.

O brave defenders of the free, For you our tears of pride! Lo, every drop of blood you shed Our hearts have sanctified! And through these days of strife and death, These weary night-times through, Our spirits watch with yours, our love It hovers over you.

[signed] Evaleen Stein



The Bomb



I

"You are late. Billy's been howling the house down."

"All babies cry, big or little, now and then. The nurse is with Billy. I—" Nellie Cameron paused to smooth a quiver out of her voice—"I am not late."

"You are not?" Joseph Cameron, bewildered, laid his paper upon his knees and squinted up at his wife.

"No, Joe, I am not." As if it absorbed her, and no one could have said that it did not, for she kept house beautifully, Nellie straightened an etching; the quietly she walked out of the room.

She went into their bedroom and closed the door. After a while Cameron, watching warily, saw her come into the hall again in a peach-colored dress that he particularly liked her in; saw her go down the hall, away from him—and she had a very good back—to the nursery door, the warm, cheerful firelight falling full upon her face, her hands, her softly glowing dress. Billy, their only son, just learning to walk, toddled to meet her. Cameron saw the chubby hands rumple her skirts, saw Nellie stoop and swing him high with her firm arms, the drop him to his place upon her breast. The door close, the hall was shadowy again, the apartment as still as a place marked "To Let."

The dinner was on time and excellent; Nellie, decorative and chatty, was promptly in her place. Dinner over, they went to the sitting-room for their coffee. The apartment was very high up, the windows looking over the tree-tops of the Drive, across the Hudson tot he Jersey shore. It was March, and the shore lights wavered in gusts of rain that threatened to turn to snow. The room was warm; Cameron was suffocating; Nellie was serenely unaware. She had eaten well, from her soup through her cheese. There are times when, to a man, a woman's appetite is the last straw. She was tired, she said, but at her ease, and never prettier.

"Going out to-night, Joey?"

"Yes. Bridge hand around at Gordon's. Want a talk with Gordon about a matter of business."

"I like to have things to do in the afternoon, but when night comes"—Nellie smothered a contented yawn—"I love getting into something comfy, and just buzzing round our own lamp."

"I must own that I have never found afternoon diversions to be diverting." To save him he could not keep his voice good-natured. He had had a grind of a day, and was dog-tired; it seemed to him she ought to know it and talk about it.

"Yes?" Nellie mused. "It was amusing at the club to-day—the Non-descripts." She laughed softly. "It wasn't 'nondescript' to-day, though!"

"Some old maid telling you to bring your children up on the country, and throw your husbands out of their jobs?"

"What, Joey?" Nellie seemed to bring her thoughts back from a long way off. "Old maid? I should say not! We had a man. We nearly always do. Then everybody comes, and there's more glow. He was an English socialist—I guess he was a socialist. Burne-Jones hair, and a homespun jacket,—loose, and all that,—and a heavy ribbon on his glasses. He talked about the new man."

"The—what?"

"The new man." Nellie opened her eyes wide, as if her husband puzzled her.

"Well—I'm damned!"

Nellie broke into sudden mirth.

"You were, Joey dear; that is just what you were. You were damned all the way there and back again."

Cameron strangled.

"Have I the honor to typify the—new creature?"

"You're the very image of him, Joey dear." And she smiled upon him as if he were some new moth, in at their window, to buzz round their lamp.

"And—this person—?"

Nellie became eagerly communicative.

"I do wonder if I can make you see him? Tall and dark, and with good-looking, thinnish hands and almost amusing way of playing with his eye-glasses. You know, Joey: the sort of distinguished talk-it-all-out sort of man that just makes men rage. Of course," she went on, largely wise, "he's the sort of socialist to make a real socialist rage, but he's just the thing for clubs."

"You often have them?"

"Of course," she laughed. "You see, we don't see much of men at home any more. It keeps us from forgetting how you look, and how amusing you may be."

Cameron gazed before him into a chaos without words.

Nellie was oblivious.

"He finished off with a perfect bomb, Joey. It was funny! Of course the new man's a city product, and he drew him to the life: rushed and tortured by ambition, tired out at the end of the day, too tired to be possibly amusing, his nerves excited till anything quieter than lower Broadway hurts his ears, all passion and brilliance spent on business, dinners here and there, with people who all have their ax to grind, too, and are keyed up to it by rows and rows of cocktails. He drew him without mercy, and he had every wife there either wincing or laughing, with the truth of what he said. He was quite eloquent." She paused, she laughed softly, she turned her eyes upon him. "Then, Joey, guess—just guess!—what he said!"

"Far be it from me!"

"He said that any intelligent modern woman would require at least one husband and three lovers to arrive at the standards and companionship of one wholesome old-fashioned man!"

Cameron got to his feet and held to the top shelf of the bookcase.

"Do you mean to tell me that respectable women sit and listen to such talk?"

"But, Joey dear, you see so little of us respectable women now, you don't really know us—"

"It's not decent—"

Nelly was all patience.

"But, you know, Joey dear, I think maybe it is true. Don't you think so?"

Cameron swallowed two or three retorts; then with a laugh that seemed to break to pieces in the air, he went into he hall, got into his hat and coat, and left the house.

Nellie listened gravely.

"Poor dear old land-lubber!" she sighed. "But it had to come sooner or later!" Then she went to the telephone.

"57900 Bryant, please. May I speak to Mr. Crane?"

II

When Cameron came in at midnight he found his wife and his old friend Willoughby Crane playing chess in the dining room.

"Hello, Joe, old man," murmured Crane. "That you?"

"Why, yes, I believe it is I," said Cameron.

"Almost forgot what you looked like," Crane rambled pleasantly. "Dropped in for a reminder."

"I'm sorry to have missed you," muttered Cameron.

"Well, you haven't altogether missed me, you know: so cheer up, old man. If Nell's good for a rubber, you may have the joy of my presence for an hour or two longer. You're lucky, having a wife who can play chess!"

"Get yourself a drink, Joey," suggested Nellie. "The whisky's in the sideboard, down on he left."

"Don't you suppose I know where the whisky is?" demanded Cameron.

"Maybe there's not much left." Nellie looked on, all solicitude.

Cameron, his thought babbling over the good old days of the ducking-stool, poured himself carefully a highball that was brown. Silence reigned. The light fell upon the head and shoulders of Crane and his long, quick-fingered hands.

"After a man has slaved his soul out," Cameron moaned, "these are the things a woman cares about!"

Crane won the rubber, and spent considerable gallantry upon Nellie in compensation. Cameron had yawned all through, but no one had noticed. Crane lighted a cigarette and perched upon the corner of the dining-table.

"I say, Joe, got anything on to-morrow night?"

"I have," said Cameron.

"Something you can't chuck?"

"Scarcely. A director's dinner."

Crane grew thoughtful.

"You certainly are a victim of the power-passion," he sighed, considering Cameron. "I don't know how you stand it. I'd have more money, no doubt, if I weren't so apathetic, but, by Jinks, it doesn't look worth it to me!"

"A question of taste," said Cameron briefly.

"Taste? If that were all!" He smoked, looking at Nellie through the haze. "I say, Nell, I've got tickets for Kreisler to-morrow night. Come with me, there's a good girl! Lend me your wife, will you, Joe?"

"Lend?" echoed Nellie. "I like that! Anybody'd take me for goods and chattels. Of course I'll come. I'd love to."

"You know, Joey," Crane went on simply, "Nellie's the only woman I know that it's real joy to hear music with. She knows what she's listening to. A fellow can sort of forget that he's got her along, an still be glad he has. As for you, you old money-hunting blunderbuss, the way you squirm in the presence of music ought to be a penitentiary offense. I'm almost glad you can't go." He gave a laugh that was dangerously genuine, and bolted for the hall to get his coat and hat.

"Poor old Joe is almost asleep," said Nellie, sweetly.

Joe did not look it, but Willoughby got out solicitously, and he sat upon a damp bench opposite Cameron's glowing windows, and he laughed and laughed till a policeman sternly ordered him to move on.

"Isn't Willoughby a dear!" Nellie commented as she moved about, putting things in their places for the night. Cameron yawned obviously. Nellie hummed a snatch of a tune.

All that long night Cameron lay stretched upon the edge of their bed, staring into the lumpy darkness. Nellie slept like a baby. But once, soon after the lights were turned off, Cameron's blood froze by inches from his head to his feet. It seemed to him that Nellie was laughing, was fairly biting her pillow to keep from laughing aloud! Gravely, of the darkness, he asked how all this had come about. He asked it of the familiar, shadowy heap of Nellie's clothes upon the chair by the window, asked if he had deserved it. Toward dawn he slept.

III

Cameron, after the way of the new man, kept some evening clothes down town. It saved traveling. The next afternoon, about four o'clock, there came, somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his brain, an aching weight. Conscience! At six-thirty he hung his dinner-jacket back in the closet and sent the directors word that he had a headache. Then, as blind as a moth, he started for home, for that lamp about which Nellie "Loved to buzz."

He let himself into the apartment, chuckling to think of Nellie's surprise, at just the hour at which they were used to dining. The place was shadowy, the table in its between-meals garb. The aching weight came back. He tapped on the nursery door.

Miss Merritt, the nurse, was dining by the nursery window, Billy's high chair drawn near by. Billy, drowsy and rosy, was waving a soup-spoon about his head, dabbing at the lights upon the silver with fat fingers that were better at clinging than at letting go.

"Good evening, Miss Merritt," said Cameron. "Hello, Bill! Where's your mother?" His tone struck false, for through his mind was booming the horrible question, "Can Nellie have gone out with that ass Crane to dine?"

Miss Merritt's mousy face became all eyes.

"Why, sir, Mrs. Cameron has gone out to dinner, and after to a concert. I guess you forgot, sir."

"Oh, yes," said Cameron, easily. "This is the night of the concert. I had absolutely forgotten. I'd have got a bite down town if I'd thought. Is the cook in?"

"Sure, sir. I'll call her."

She left Cameron alone with Billy, who, cannibal-wise, was chewing his father's hand and crowing over the appetizing bumps and veins.

"If you'd jest 'ave 'phoned, sir," panted the cook, who was a large, purple-faced person.

Cameron sighed.

"Just anything, Katy. I have a headache. Some eggs and toast—poached eggs, I think."

In another moment the maid passed the nursery door, with white things over her arm, on her way to set the table.

Cameron, dazed as never in his life before, lifted Billy to his shoulder and trotted up and down the room. "Nice little boy!" he laughed, Billy's damp fists hitting at him in ecstasy. "I'll just take him to the sitting-room while you finish your dinner." He did his best to pretend that the situation was not unusual, to act as if, in his own home, a man could be nothing but at home. All these confounded hirelings, acting as if they owned the place, had the cheek to be amazed over his dropping in!

Miss Merritt beamed.

"I always say, sir, that boys should know their fathers."

"Boys should know their fathers?" This was almost the last straw.

"Here!" said Miss Merritt, holding out a pink-edged blanket. "Jest put in on your lap, sir." There was about her that utter peculiar lack of decorum that is common to nurses and mothers and Cameron, blushing furiously, grabbed the blanket and fled.

"Boys should know their father, hey?" Cameron was enraged. "We'll see about that pretty quick!" Billy crowed with joy as the blanket flapped about them, and, above the chasm of his doubts and his conscience Cameron heard himself laugh, too. He got into his arm-chair. Billy, so warm and solid and gay, so evidently liking him, gave him, parent that he was, the thrill of adventure as his hands held him and knew him for his own. The blanket spread upon his knees, the door closed, Cameron expanded with the desire to know his son, even as it was desirable that his son should know him. He turned him over and around, he studied the vagaries of scallops and pearl buttons; profoundly he pitied his small image for all of his discomforts, and advised him to grow out of safety-pins as fast as possible. He fell into a philosophical mood, spouting away at Bill, and Bill responded with fists and delicious gurgles and an imitative sense of investigation. Cameron reflected, with illumination, upon the amusing sounds a baby makes when the world is well. They were really having an awfully good time.

Billy was fuzzy and blond, one of those moist, very blue-eyed babies that women appreciate. Cameron all at once saw why. Warmth expanded his aching heart, and his arms circled his own mite of boy. Billy yawned, agreed instantly with Cameron that a yawn from a baby was funny, and with a chuckle pitched against Cameron, bumped his nose on a waistcoat button, considered the button solemnly, with his small mouth stuck out ridiculously, and then snuggled into the hollow of his father's arms, and, closing his big eyes with a confidence that made thrills creep over him, the man, and brought something stinging to his eyes, Bill went to sleep.

After an unmeasured lapse of time, Miss Merritt came for the baby. "Oh, the lambkin! Ain't he sweet, sir?"

Cameron ached in every joint, but he did not know it.

"Take care how you handle him!" he whispered. "It's awful to be awakened out of one's first sleep!"

"I know better than to wake a sleepin' baby, believe me," said Miss Merritt with a touch of spice.

The door closed. Cameron sat stretching his stiff arms and legs and staring before him, and upon his usually tired and lined face was the beam of full joy.

Then came dinner, a lonely, silent mockery of a meal. And back the question came, booming over the soft tinkling of glass and silver. He realized, with his salad, that four nights out of seven, Nellie dined like this, alone. His lower lip protruded, and lines of conscience fell in a curtain on his face.

"Mrs. Cameron hates eatin' 'lone, too," said the maid. "She generally eats early, so 's t' have Billy in his high chair 'longside. If he sleeps, she reads a book, sir."

He was alone in the sitting-room with his coffee, and the place had sunk into fathomless silence. It was only half after eight! He stuck his head out of the window. Soft flakes touched and soothed his feverish head. "Damn money!" he whispered suddenly, then stood back in the room, startled, staring his blasphemy in the face. He'd go out in the snow, and get rid of himself. This was awful!

Bundled in a greatcoat, collar high, trousers rolled up, he ducked out of the great marble and iron vestibule into the night. There was no wind, and the snow was falling softly, steadily. The drive was deserted, and he made his way across to the walk along the wall. By the light of the lamp, blurred by the flakes till it looked like a tall-stemmed thistle-ball, he looked at his watch. No matter where Nellie had dined, she was a the concert by now, and a great sigh of relief fluttered the flakes about his mouth.

He turned north, glad of the rise in the ground to walk against. "By jinks!" he smiled grudgingly, "it's not so bad out here. We city idiots, we—NEW MEN, with all our motors and subways, we are forgetting how to prowl."

The world fell of to shadow a little beyond the shore-line, a mere space of air and flakes. Ice swirled by its way to the sea, for the tide was going out. He peered; he began to hear all sorts of fine snow-muffled sounds; and suddenly, away out on the river, something was going on—boats whistling and signaling, chatting in their scientific persiflage, out in the dark and cold of the night. "Lonesome, too!" Cameron laughed, and, boyishly, he tossed a snow-ball into the space, as if he'd have something to say out there, too! "I'm soft!" he groaned, clutching his arm. And suddenly he smiled to think how one of these days he and Bill would come out here and play together. He looked about, and a sudden pride filled him. He was actually the only creature enjoying this splendid snow! He had passed one old gentleman in a fur-lined coat, with a cap upon his white hair, walking slowly, a white bulldog playing after him in the scarcely trodden snow.

Cameron turned home, a new and inexplicable glow upon him, cares dropped away. He marched; he laughed aloud once with a sudden thought of Bill. "Little corker!" He let himself in, and went straight to the bedroom to change his shoes. "I must get some water-tight things to prowl in," he thought, and he whistled a line of "Tipperary." Blurred in a pleasant fatigue he sat on the edge of his bed, staring at his wet socks, when the telephone jingled, and he hurried out to answer.

"Yep, this is Cameron. Oh, hello, old girl! Thought I'd just come up for a quiet home dinner, you know." A grin like the setting sun for warmth spread over his face as he listened, as he felt the tables turning under his wet feet.

"Nope. Just bored down-town. Felt like bein' cozy and—buzzin' round the lamp in something comfy. Fine! Had a regular banquet! Bill's all right, little devil! I tucked him in so he shouldn't be lonesome.

"Me? I've been out walkin'. Been throwin' snow-balls at the street-lamps. My feet are soakin', but I don't care, I don't care. Heard a concert myself, thanks. Whistles and things tootin' out in the snow on the river to beat the band! Don't think of it! I'm fine. Enjoy yourself. What's life for? Good night, old girl. Don't lose your key!"

Cameron got as far as the cedar chest in the hall, but there, in his wet socks, he sat down and he laughed until he ached all over. Suddenly he stiffened, and his heels banged against the chest.

Miss Merritt, mouth and eyes wide open, stood absorbing him, as crimson as was Cameron himself.

"I heard the 'phone," she faltered. "Miss. Cameron always calls up to know if Billy's all right—"

"I know that she does," said Cameron, stiffly, and, rising, he stocking-footed it past her and shut himself in his bedroom.

"yes, sir; good night, sir." Miss Merritt stared at his door. "Good Lord!" she whispered in the nursery, "how awful for Billy and her if he takes to drink!"

Nellie came out of the telephone booth, her face white with horror. "Willoughby," she gasped, "get me a taxi quick!"

"Billy—"

"No, no, NO! It's Joe!"

"What—"

"Oh," she wailed, "I've gone too far! Joe is—drunk!"

Willoughby's face went to pieces.

"Don't look like that, Nell! Don't! What of it? Just what we've been up to, isn't it?"

"How can you say that? Get my wraps. I am going home."

"Your car isn't ordered till eleven—"

"What do I care what I go in? Oh, I have been such a fool!"

"Don't mention it," grinned Crane as he wrapped her coat about her.

Gaily Crane waved his white-gloved hand to her, her face gleaming back pearl-like for an instant in the shadowy taxi; then she was whirled northward and lost in the snowy night. Back in his place next to Nellie's empty chair, he mused tenderly over the vagaries of a mere bachelor till the incomparable Austrian carried his mind off to where tone is reality, where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.

Nellie fitted the key into the lock. Her fingers shook. The apartment was dark except for a light in the hall, and as still as if it were empty. If only Joe would STAY asleep till he'd had time to sleep this horrible state of affairs away!

She switched off the light and carefully let herself into their room, and stood a moment, huddled, breathless, against the door. The room was ghostly. The vague, snow-veiled light filtered in from the street-lamp below, making of Cameron an incoherent lump, wrapped to his eyes in the covers of their chintz-hung bed.

Her hands clasped tight, she peered at him through the shadows. He did not move. He was sleeping heavily, curiously, irregularly, his breath coming in jerky little snorts. "Oh," she wailed in her guilt heart, "he is, he is! Poor dear old Joey, drunk! And it's all, all my fault!" Swiftly she undressed in the dark. If he were to awaken, to begin saying awful maudlin things—-

Her heart pounding, she lifted the covers and crept into martyrdom on the hard edge of the bed. Cameron slept on. Once he seemed to be strangling in a bad dream, and she fought with her sense of duty to awaken him, then, miserably, let him strangle!

Gravely Nellie's tired eyes traveled from familiar shadow to shadow, to rest at last upon the dangling heap of clothes upon a chair by the window that symbolized Joe Cameron by the sane light of day. Fatigue tossed her off to sleep now and then; terror snatched her back and made her cry. In the first faint dawn she awakened with a start to find that in her sleep her tired body had slipped back to its place, and her head was resting deliciously upon her pillow. And, with the growing dawn, humor came creeping back, and try as she would, her mouth twitched. Of all people, dear old Joey! Carefully she turned her head and peered at him. His face was turned toward her, what light there was fell full upon him. Wonder took away her smile. His face was fresh, the lines of care and worry softened away as if he were at the end of a two weeks' vacation. She rested her chin on her arm, amazed, puzzled. And suddenly a grin like the sunrise spread over Joe's face, and he opened his eyes.

[signed] Alice Woods

By courtesy of "The Century."



To Those Who Go



In a sense the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who go to France are modern crusaders. Like the valiant men of the Middle Ages who traveled far to fight in strange lands for the ideal that possessed their souls, these twentieth-century knights-errant go to defend the ideals of liberty and right and honor which are the issues of this war and which our Allies have successfully upheld for more than three years.

In that chivalric spirit General Pershing stood at the tomb of LaFayette and said, "LaFayette, we are here." As a young man only twenty years old LaFayette went out to a new land to fight for liberty, and now after nearly a century and a half the same inspiration that sent him forth is taking our young men back to fight in the land o his birth the old fight for right. The great romance of international history which the relations of France and America have afforded from the birth of this republic has entered a new chapter with the pilgrimage of our fighting men to Europe, and the inestimable service of LaFayette and his comrades to our infant republic is now to be in part repaid by the nation that France helped to establish.

But though it is a chivalric mission on which our soldiers go, they should not enter France in the attitude of saviors. It must be remembered that the United States came very late into this war, and while our troops and even more our money and material resources may have decisive weight toward victory, yet it is France, England, Italy, Russia against whom the enemy has spent his strength. Our Allies have brought the war already to its turning point, and we can at best only add completeness to their achievement. Furthermore, while we aid France and her Allies, we are defending ourselves also. We went to war because Germany was killing our citizens, was plotting against the peace and security of our nation, because her restless ambition and lust for power were choking not only Europe but the world.

Our American soldiers will find in France a people who have endured with wonderful courage and devotion through more than three years of terrific strain against odds which must often have seemed hopeless. The French are the heroes of this war. They have been in the fight from the beginning and will be there until the end. Their armies were fully engaged when England had not a hundred thousand men under arms and Italy was a neutral; they fought on when Russia lost her grip; and they will not quit until their land is cleared of invaders and the Prussian shadow that has darkened France for more than forty years is lifted. More than any other country except Belgium, France has felt the horror and hardships of the war which we are spared because she has paid the price of our protection.

American soldiers who go to France are to be envied because they are getting what comes to few men,—opportunity to be of direct, vital service to that country. To be young, to be fit, to have a part however small in the great events that are making the world over into a safer and happier place for our children to live in, is something for a man to be proud of now and to remember with satisfaction to his last day.

The war may last much longer than we now anticipate, but there can be no doubt of the ultimate victory of the cause to which we are committed. The world never turns back, it moves always forward, always upward. Our soldiers may go out, as the Crusaders went of old, with absolute faith that their service will not be given in vain, that their effort and daring will not be unavailing.

[signed] Myron Herrick



The Hero's Peace



There is a peace that springs where battles thunder, Unknown to those who walk the ways of peace Drowsy with safety, praising soft release From pain and strife and the discomfortable wonder Of life lived vehemently to its last, wild flame: This peace thinks not of safety, is not bound To the wincing flesh, nor to the piteous round Of human hopes and memories, nor to Fame.

Immutable and immortal it is born Within the spirit that has looked on fear Till fear has looked askance; on death has gazed As on an equal, and with noble scorn, Spurning the self that held the self too dear, To the height of being mounts calm and unamazed.

[signed] Amelie Rives (Princess Troubetzkoy)

Castle Hill, Virginia

THE END