There seemed to be nothing that I could do.  Before his conscious eyes I was an intruder, gazing at him in his extremity.  I went away.  And now and then, when I hear this talk of national honour, and am carried away with a hot flame of resentment so that I, too, would cry for war, I seem to see that dying boy’s eyes, looking through the mists that are vengeance and hatred and affronted pride, to war as it is—­the end of hope, the gate of despair and agony and death.

After my return I received these letters.  The woman who wrote them will, I know, forgive me for publishing extracts from them.  She is a Belgian, married to an American.  More clearly than any words of mine, they show where falls the burden of war: 

“I have just learned that my youngest brother has been killed in action in Flanders.  King Albert decorated him for conspicuous bravery on April 22d, and my poor boy went to his reward on April 26th.  In my leaden heart, through my whirling brain, your words keep repeating themselves:  ‘For King and Country!’ Yes, he died for them, and died a hero!  I know only that his regiment, the Grenadiers, was decimated.  My poor little boy!  God pity us all, and save martyred Belgium!”

In a second letter: 

“I enclose my dear little boy’s obituary notice.  He died at the head of his company and five hundred and seventy-four of his Grenadiers went down with him.  Their regiment effectively checked the German advance, and in recognition General Joffre pinned the Cross of the Legion of Honour to his regimental colours.  But we are left to mourn—­though I do no begrudge my share of sorrow.  The pain is awful, and I pray that by the grace of God you may never know what it means.”

For King and Country!

The only leaven in this black picture of war as have seen it, as it has touched me, has been the scarlet of the Red Cross.  To a faith that the terrible scene at the front had almost destroyed, came every now and then again the flash of the emblem of mercy Hope, then, was not dead.  There were hands to soothe and labour, as well as hands to kill.  There was still brotherly love in the world.  There was a courage that was not of hate.  There was a patience that was not a lying in wait.  There was a flag that was not of one nation, but of all the world; a flag that needed no recruiting station, for the ranks it led were always full to overflowing; a flag that stood between the wounded soldier and death; that knew no defeat but surrender to the will of the God of Battles.

And that flag I followed.  To the front, to the field hospitals behind the trenches, to railway stations, to hospital trains and ships, to great base hospitals.  I watched its ambulances on shelled roads.  I followed its brassards as their wearers, walking gently, carried stretchers with their groaning burdens.  And, whatever may have failed in this war—­treaties, ammunition, elaborate strategies, even some of the humanities—­the Red Cross as a symbol of service has never failed.