as they have now. They would have fared
badly of course, even worse than the women in England, but they are
faring badly now, and to what purpose? The women of Belgium have fared
badly. After all, the greatest thing in life is not to live
comfortably--it is to live honorably, and when that becomes impossible,
to die honorably!

The woman who knits is thinking sadly of the glad days of peace, now
unhappily gone by, when she was so sure it was her duty to bring
children into the world. She thinks of the glad rapture with which she
looked into the sweet face of her first-born twenty years ago--the
brave lad who went with the first contingent, and is now at the front.
She was so sure then that she had done a noble thing in giving this
young life to the world. He was to have been a great doctor, a great
healer, one who bound up wounds, and make weak men strong--and now--in
the trenches, he stands, this lad of hers, with the weapons of death in
his hands, with bitter hatred in his heart, not binding wounds, but
making them, sending poor human beings out in the dark to meet their
Maker, unprepared, surrounded by sights and sounds that must harden his
heart or break it. Oh! her sunny-hearted lad! So full of love and
tenderness and pity, so full of ambition and high resolves and noble
impulses, he is dead--dead already--and in his place there stands
"private 355" a man of hate, a man of blood! Many a time the knitting
has to be laid aside, for the bitter tears blur the stitches.

The woman who knits thinks of all this and now she feels that she who
brought this boy into the world, who is responsible for his existence,
has some way been to blame. Is life really such a boon that any should
crave it? Do we really confer a favor on the innocent little souls we
bring into the world, or do we owe them an apology?

She thinks now of Abraham's sacrifice, when he was willing at God's
command to offer his dearly beloved son on the altar; and now she knows
it was not so hard for Abraham, for he knew it was God who asked it,
and he had God's voice to guide him! Abraham was sure, but about
this--who knows?

Then she thinks of the little one who dropped out of the race before it
was well begun, and of the inexplicable smile of peace which lay on his
small white face, that day, so many years ago now, when they laid him
away with such sorrow, and such agony of loss. She understands now why
the little one smiled, while all around