he mothers; and recent Government
inquiries seem to show that in spite of universal employment, and high
wages, the drunkenness of the United Kingdom as a whole is markedly less,
while at the same time--uncomfortable paradox!--the amount of alcohol
consumed is greater. One hears stories of extravagance among those who
have been making "war-profits," but they are less common this year than
last; and as to my own experience, all my friends are wearing their old
clothes, and the West End dressmakers, poor things, in view of a large
section of the public which regards it as a crime "to buy anything new"
are either shutting down till better days, or doing a greatly restricted
business. Taxation has grown much heavier, and will be more and more
severely felt. Yet very few grumble, and there is a general and determined
cutting down of the trappings and appendages of life, which is to the good
of us all.

Undoubtedly, there is a very warm and wide-spread feeling among us that in
this war the women of the nation have done uncommonly well! You will
remember a similar stir of grateful recognition in America after your War
of Secession, connected with the part played in the nursing and sanitation
of the war by the women of the Northern States. The feeling here may well
have an important social and political influence when the war is over;
especially among the middle and upper classes. It may be counter-balanced
to some extent in the industrial class, by the disturbance and anxiety
caused in many trades, but especially in the engineering trades, by that
great invasion of women I have tried to describe. But that the war will
leave _some_ deep mark on that long evolution of the share of women in our
public life, which began in the teeming middle years of the last century,
is, I think, certain.

_May 2nd._--So I come to the end of the task you set me!--with what gaps
and omissions to look back upon, no one knows so well as myself. This
letter starts on its way to you at a critical moment for your great
country, when the issue between the United States and Germany is still
unsettled. What will happen? Will Germany give way? If not, what sort of
relations will shape themselves, and how quickly, between the Central
Empires and America? To express myself on this great matter is no part of
my task; although no English man or woman but will watch its development
with a deep and passionate interest. What may be best for you, we cannot
tell;