The things that I said to them do not matter; they merely served as an introduction to what came after, when we sat around the stove and the young girls of the company brought us coffee and sandwiches, and mocha cake and home-made candy, and these women told me some of the things that are near their hearts.

“I drove fourteen miles to-day,” said one woman, “but those of us who live long on the prairie do not mind these things.  We were two hundred miles from a railway when we went in first, and we only got our mail ‘in the spring.’  Now, when we have a station within fourteen miles and a post-office on the next farm, we feel we are right in the midst of things, and I suppose we do not really mind the inconveniences that would seem dreadful to some people.  We have done without things all our lives, always hoping for better things to come, and able to bear things that were disagreeable by telling ourselves that the children would have things easier than we had had them.  We have had frozen crops; we have had hail; we have had serious sickness; but we have not complained, for all these things seemed to be God’s doings, and no one could help it.  We took all this—­face upwards; but with the war—­it is different.  The war is not God’s doings at all.  Nearly all the boys from our neighborhood are gone, and some are not coming back——­”

She stopped abruptly, and a silence fell on the group of us.  She fumbled for a moment in her large black purse, and then handed me an envelope, worn, battered.  It was addressed to a soldier in France and it had not been opened.  Across the corner, in red ink, was written the words, “Killed in action.”

“My letters are coming back now,” she said simply.  “Alex was my eldest boy, and he went at the first call for men, and he was only eighteen—­he came through Saint-Eloi and Festubert—­But this happened in September.”

The woman who sat beside her took up the theme.  “We have talked a lot about this at our Red Cross meetings.  What do the women of the world think of war?  No woman ever wanted war, did she?  No woman could bring a child into the world, suffering for it, caring for it, loving it, without learning the value of human life, could she?  War comes about because human life is the cheapest thing in the world; it has been taken at man’s estimate, and that is entirely too low.  Now, we have been wondering what can be done when this war is over to form a league of women to enforce peace.  There is enough sentiment in the world in favor of human life if we could bind it up some way.”

I gazed at the eager faces before me—­in astonishment.  Did I ever hear high-browed ladies in distant cities talk of the need of education in the country districts?