g-waving and calling the Germans
names. She just talked, groping now and then for the right word. And if
a tithe of what she told is true--well, she made me wish I were a man."

One small, soft hand, outstretched over the chair-arm toward the fire,
shut suddenly into a hard little fist. And for a moment Thompson felt
acutely uncomfortable, without knowing why.

Carr eyed his daughter impassively. In a few seconds she went on.

"Of course I know that in any large army there is bound to be a certain
percentage of abnormals who will be up to all sorts of deviltry whenever
they find themselves free of direct restraint," she said. "The history
of warfare shows that. But this Belgian woman's account puts a
different face on things. These unmentionable brutalities weren't
isolated cases. Her story gave me the impression of ordered barbarity,
of systematic terrorizing by the foulest means imaginable. The sort of
thing the papers have been publishing--and worse."

"Discount that, Sophie," Carr remarked calmly. "The Germans are reckoned
in the civilized scale the same as ourselves. I'm not ready to damn
sixty-five million human beings outright because certain members of the
group act like brutes. The chances are that a German soldier would be
shot by his own command, for robbery or rape or any of these
brutalities, as promptly as one of our own offenders. The fact of the
matter is that there are a lot of hysterical people loose among us who
seem to think they can kill German soldiers by calling them bad names.
The Allies will win this war with cannon and bayonets, but up to the
present we seem to think we must supplement our bullets with epithets.
Doubtless the Germans do the same at home. It's part of the game."

"Oh, I suppose so," Sophie admitted. "But what a horror this war must be
for those helpless people who are caught in its sweep."

"If it affects you like that, be thankful it isn't over here," Carr said
lightly. "War is all that Sherman said it was. As a matter of fact
modern warfare with every scientific and chemical means of destruction
at its hand can't result in anything but horror piled on horror. I look
for some startling--"

The faint whirr of a buzzer and the patter of a maid's feet along the
hall, checked Carr's speech. He did not resume. Instead he reached for a
box of cigars, and lighted one. By that time Tommy Ashe was being
ushered in.

Tommy exuded geniality from every pore of his ruddy countenance