Then there was the little woman born and bred in the Army, with all the pride of the Army—­a familiar type.  Husband a sergeant in the Guards—­was gymnastic instructor at a northern town—­and need not have gone to the war, but felt “as a professional soldier” he ought to go.  Three brothers in the Army—­one a little drummer-boy of sixteen, badly wounded in the retreat from Mons. Her sailor brother had died—­probably from exposure, in the North Sea.  The most cheerful, plucky little creature!  “We are Army people, and must expect to fight.”

Well—­you say you “would like America to visualise the effort, the self-sacrifice of the English men and women who are determined to see this war through.”  There was, I thought, a surprising amount of cheerful effort, of understanding self-sacrifice in those nine homes, where my companion’s friendly talk drew out the family facts without difficulty.  And I am convinced that if I had spent days instead of hours in following her through the remaining tenements in these huge and populous blocks the result would have been practically the same. The nation is behind the war, and behind the Government—­solidly determined to win this war, and build a new world after it.

As to the work of our women, I have described something of it in the munitions area, and if this letter were not already too long, I should like to dwell on much else—­the army of maidens, who, as V.A.D.’s (members of Voluntary Aid Detachments), trained by the Red Cross, have come trooping from England’s most luxurious or comfortable homes, and are doing invaluable work in hundreds of hospitals; to begin with, the most menial scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and honourable—­but not more indispensable—­tasks of nursing itself.  In this second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.’s, now promoted, has everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness and the same devotion as the first.  Or I could dwell on the women’s hospitals—­especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with entire confidence and grateful good-will.  To see a woman dentist at work on a soldier’s mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores, and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing times.  The work done by the Scottish Women’s Hospital in Serbia will rank as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war.  The magnificent work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of.  And everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France, through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of