sent to different entertainments given for soldiers.  At one place a woman got up and invited the girls to ask the boys to dance.  At another a crowd of girls were lined up wearing different ribbons, and the boys marched along until each one found the girl wearing a ribbon to match the one he wore.  That was his partner.  It was interesting to see the eager, mischievous, brooding eyes of these girls as they watched and waited.  Just as interesting was it to see this boy’s face when he found his partner was ugly, and that boy swell with pride when he found he had picked a “winner.”  It was all adventure for both boys and girls.  But I saw more than that in it.  Whenever I could not avoid meeting a girl I tried to be agreeable and to talk about war, and soldiers, and what was going on.  I did not dance, of course, and I imagine more than one girl found me a “queer soldier.”

It always has touched me, though, to see and feel the sweetness, graciousness, sympathy, kindness, and that other indefinable something, in the girls I have met.  How they made me think of you, Lenore!  No doubt about their hearts, their loyalty, their Americanism.  Every soldier who goes to France can fight for some girl!  They make you feel that.  I believe I have gone deeper than most soldiers in considering what I will call war-relation of the sexes.  If it is normal, then underneath it all is a tremendous inscrutable design of nature or God.  If that be true, actually true, then war must be inevitable and right!  How horrible!  My thoughts confound me sometimes.  Anyway, the point I want to make is this:  I heard an officer tell an irate father, whose two daughters had been insulted by soldiers:  “My dear sir, it is regrettable.  These men will be punished.  But they are not greatly to blame, because so many girls throw themselves at their heads.  Your daughters did not, of course, but they should not have come here.”  That illustrates the fixed idea of the military, all through the ranks—­Women throw themselves at soldiers! It is true that they do.  But the idea is false, nevertheless, because the mass of girls are misunderstood.

Misunderstood!—­I can tell you why.  Surely the mass of American girls are nice, fine, sweet, wholesome.  They are young.  The news of war liberates something in them that we can find no name for.  But it must be noble.  A soldier!  The very name, from childhood, is one to make a girl thrill.  What then the actual thing, the uniform, invested somehow with chivalry and courage, the clean-cut athletic young man, somber and fascinating with his intent eyes, his serious brow, or his devil-may-care gallantry, the compelling presence of him that breathes of his sacrifice, of his near departure to privation, to squalid, comfortless trenches, to the fire and hell of war, to blood and agony and death—­in a word to fight, fight, fight for women!...  So through this beautiful emotion women lose their balance