It was with an almost breaking heart that he and the other boys rapidly retraced their steps and finally gained the warehouse. As he went up the long stairs, Professor Morris left his corner, and stood ready to greet them. He was smiling.
"Well, well, where is Elinor?" he asked testily.
"We did not find her," answered Warren curtly. He was so tired that he staggered as he walked. He gained the top of the steps and, crossing unsteadily to Evelyn, laid the baby in her arms. Its little pinched face, and bloodstained dress prepared her for Warren's story.
"It is nearly starved," she said. "What shall we give it?"
"I know," said Ivan. "Babies all drink milk, don't they? There is a court down below, and when we went out I saw a couple of goats in it."
It was true, and the poor creatures were glad enough to be milked. The baby, finally fed and warmed, slept exhausted in Evelyn's arms.
In all the cruel war whose dark shadow obscured Europe a great deal of suffering fell to the share of the poor little babies and the small children. To older children war could be explained. It was a vast and terrible something that swept away homes and food and comfort. It was a monster that devoured fathers and brothers, and left families without support, and homeless. But there was a reason that could be told, and which they could understand more or less.
But the tiny ones, alas! What could be told them when their little world tumbled, when they were carried out from warmth and safety, when food was denied; when the bosoms that had warmed them grew cold and unresponsive, what could they do but suffer and die the slow, torturing death of hunger and cold?
Their little cries arose to heaven, there were no ears to hear them when the thunder of guns drowned all else. Poor, poor babies! Born, many of them, to enlighten the world with new discoveries, to cure the afflicted, to bring joy, they have perished as surely or a cause which they could not understand as have the soldiers in the trenches.
When great nations are falling, and men are being mowed down like grass, in numbers beyond the counting, the lives of little babies can only be held precious by mothers who guard them with their every breath.