There was the usual hustle and delay, but at last the signal blew and the snorting engine dragged them away to the tunnel which swallowed the hearts of half the women left behind. It was an awful moment, just black darkness that could be felt. There is something wrong, Cornelia, something terribly wrong with a world in which such things are possible. People can't have been meant to suffer so much, yet somehow I feel that we have not come to the end of the pain yet. It is Calvary we are coming to, and this is only getting us ready.
Himself said very little. He just looked wrung and asked some one in a very quick, hoarse voice to take care of me.
So he is away out into the void, the biggest void of all, and I am left to fill up and carry on as best I can.
Your dear letter has turned my thoughts into an entirely new direction. George's summing up of your feverish war activities in America as "getting restless in your sleep" is really fine. Tell him with my love that I did not think he could have evolved it from his gay inner consciousness. What I am absolutely sure about, is that there is nothing feverish or casual about his war activities. I shall expect to receive a photograph of him in uniform. Age? What is Age? It doesn't count in this war. The uniform took ten years off Himself's age and he will see that they are kept off.
I know a man, one of our County magnates, who has given four sons to the war. Two have been killed, one still fights and the last has been invalided out and given a military post at home.
The old man, seventy, if he is a day, has got himself taken on somehow, and in ranker's uniform acts as his Colonel Son's orderly and is very particular about the salutes!
Love of country is ageless, thank God; Himself thinks before we are through every veteran will have to take his stand.
Don't get worried, because you seem to be going slow. Of course, what you tell me in confidence is a little disappointing. We did think you were quietly getting ready before the clarion call was sounded.
Well, never mind, you will soon get a move on. You are such a tremendous big brother. When you really get into fighting trim the earth, to say nothing of the Kaiser, must tremble.
Tell George to write to me without fail whenever he gets back from Washington.