called Death. And I don't believe it's all
for nothing; I won't believe it's all for nothing. If I believed it
was all for nothing I would quit; we would all quit.

"Then there is the suffering," she continued, after a pause. "I don't
know why there should be suffering, but I know if there were no
suffering there would be no kindness. It is not until you are
hit--hard hit--that you begin to think of other people. Until then all
is selfishness. But we women--we women of the war--we have nothing
left to be selfish for. But we have the whole world to be unselfish
for. It's all different, and it can never go back. We won't let it go
back. We've paid too much to let it go back."

It was hard to find a reply. "I think I knew your husband, a little,"
I ventured. "He was a--a man."

"He was all that," she said. She arose and stood for a moment in an
attitude of hesitation; her fingers went to her lips as though
enjoining caution. Then, with quick decision, she went into an inner
room, from which she returned with a letter.

"If you knew him you may care to read this," she said. "It's very
personal, and yet, some way, everything is impersonal now, in a sense.
There has been such a common cause, and such a wave of common
suffering, that it seems to flood out over the individual and embrace
us all. Individualism is gone. It's the community now; the state;
mankind, if you like, above everything. I suppose, so far as German
kultur stands for that, it has been imposed upon the world. . . . So
this is really, in a sense, your letter as well as mine."

I took it and read:

I have had many letters to write since my service began as a nurse in
the war, but never have I approached the task with such mixed emotions.
The pain I must give you I would gladly bear myself if I could; but it
is not all pain; underneath it, running through it in some way I cannot
explain, is a note so much deeper than pain that it must be joy.

You will already have been advised that David Elden was among those who
fell at Courcelette. It is trite to say that you have the sympathy of
a grateful nation. How grateful the nation really is we shall know by
its treatment of the heroes who survive the war, and of the dependents
of those who have crossed over. But nothing can rob you of the
knowledge that he played a man's part. Nothing can debar you from that
universal fellowship of sympathy which is springing up wherever manhood
is va