One gets bewildered in this strange hurly-burly where every mask seems to be torn off and the decencies of life hardly respected any more.
I am so glad you are easier in your mind about Anne. Effie was tremendously interested. All she said was "Anne will never marry that one; he's only experimental." Perhaps that may comfort you a little. Presumably, these birds of a feather understand one another!
Sometimes I have the awful feeling that Effie has passed out of the region of my love and care. Yet how dare I intrude these little personal fears upon a world's sorrow?
Every day I am writing letters to fathers and mothers whose darlings have gone forever "where, beyond these voices, there is peace."
One grows heart weary of the task, and even the balm of Gilead seems to have lost its power to soothe or heal.
Yet often and often I am thrilled by the courage and calmness and faith of those who have given the most. They are upheld and illumined by some white and lovely flame which surely emanates from the secret place of the Most High.
Never has there been such glory of sacrifice ennobled by that passion for the right which lifts those whom it inspires very high, above ignoble things.
My country was never greater than now, Cornelia. Shorn and blood-stained, she is worthy to be numbered with those who are arrayed in white robes and have come out of great tribulation.
A wonderful, wonderful thing has just happened. I don't know quite how to tell you.
I have been asked by our Foreign Office to go to America and tell part of the story of what we have done in the war and what the war has done for us.