Through everything else I had been upheld; but at the strains of that anthem, and all it implied, I broke down helplessly. When we went to the door and my husband stood to listen to the cheering of my friends, in his khaki with the empty sleeve, and the fine, stirring, noble air was played again, his eyes, as well as mine, were wet.
It recalled to me what he said once when I was allowed to relieve the night nurse and sit beside him at Paignton. He woke in the small hours and smiled at me—his distant, dreamy smile. His only words—words he seemed to bring with him out of the lands of sleep, in which perhaps he lived again what now was past for him—his only words were:
"You know the Stars and Stripes were at Bois Grenier."
"How?" I asked, to humor him, thinking him delirious.
He laughed—the first thing that could be called a laugh since they had brought him there.
"Sewn or my undershirt—over my heart! It will be there again," he added, "floating openly!"
And almost immediately he fell asleep once more.
And, after all, it is to be there again—floating openly. The time-struggle has taken it and will carry it aloft. It has taken other flags, too—flags of Asia; flags of South America; flags of the islands of the seas. As my husband predicted long ago, mankind is divided into just two camps. So be it! God knows I don't want war. I have been too near it, and too closely touched by it, ever to wish again to hear a cannon-shot or see a sword. But I suppose it is all a part of the great War in Heaven.
Michael and his angels are fighting, and the dragon is fighting and his angels. By that I do not mean that all the good is on one side and all the evil on the other. God forbid! There is good and evil on both sides. On both sides doubtless evil is being purged away and the new, true man is coming to his own.