Without knowing why, at sight of that face Norma suddenly felt terribly afraid. This mood passed quickly, for again Lieutenant Warren was speaking.
“We worked hour after hour, day after day, without sleep. On our ambulances we carried white-haired men whose legs had been shot away, mothers whose children had perished, children who had lost their mothers forever, and babies—tiny babies in cribs, in blankets.” Her voice broke.
Then standing tall and straight, with the medal gleaming on her breast, she said:
“Hate! Terrible hate did all this! It is for you and me to take the places of brave young men who are eager to help put down this terrible enemy and to silence their machine guns forever. Are we going to do it?”
Instantly there came a cry that was like the roar of the sea. “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
But Norma stole a look at Lena’s face.
Then, as if afraid she might leave a picture too terrible for all these young minds, Lieutenant Warren went back to the days before the defeat of France. She painted pictures of friendly villages in France. The grocer, the baker, the aged shoemaker, and all the little farmers—they were all there.
“These,” she went on quietly, “are the people we are fighting for—the good, kindly, simple common people. In France, Belgium, the Netherlands, in Poland—all over Europe they are starving slaves today. We are fighting that they may be made free and that our own people shall never be enslaved.”
Then she told of those good, brave days in unoccupied France, when a great general had pinned the Croix de Guerre on her blouse and all the good people had wept.
All in all Norma thought it the grandest speech she had ever heard.