“I went to a Belgian Relief Fund lecture in the Granada ballroom this afternoon,” she said at last.  “A Belgian woman—­a refugee—­spoke in broken English.  The things she told.  It was horrible.  I wonder if they could be true?”

“Atrocities?” Carr questioned.

Sophie nodded.

“That’s propaganda,” her father declared judicially.  “We’re being systematically stimulated to ardent support of the war in men and money through the press and public speaking, through every available avenue that clever minds can devise.  We are not a martial nation, so we have to be spurred, our emotions aroused.  Of course there are atrocities.  Is there an instance in history where an invading army did not commit all sorts of excesses on enemy soil?”

“I know,” Sophie said absently.  “But this woman’s story—­she wasn’t one of your glib platform spouters, flag-waving and calling the Germans names.  She just talked, groping now and then for the right word.  And if a tithe of what she told is true—­well, she made me wish I were a man.”

One small, soft hand, outstretched over the chair-arm toward the fire, shut suddenly into a hard little fist.  And for a moment Thompson felt acutely uncomfortable, without knowing why.

Carr eyed his daughter impassively.  In a few seconds she went on.

“Of course I know that in any large army there is bound to be a certain percentage of abnormals who will be up to all sorts of deviltry whenever they find themselves free of direct restraint,” she said.  “The history of warfare shows that.  But this Belgian woman’s account puts a different face on things.  These unmentionable brutalities weren’t isolated cases.  Her story gave me the impression of ordered barbarity, of systematic terrorizing by the foulest means imaginable.  The sort of thing the papers have been publishing—­and worse.”

“Discount that, Sophie,” Carr remarked calmly.  “The Germans are reckoned in the civilized scale the same as ourselves.  I’m not ready to damn sixty-five million human beings outright because certain members of the group act like brutes.  The chances are that a German soldier would be shot by his own command, for robbery or rape or any of these brutalities, as promptly as one of our own offenders.  The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of hysterical people loose among us who seem to think they can kill German soldiers by calling them bad names.  The Allies will win this war with cannon and bayonets, but up to the present we seem to think we must supplement our bullets with epithets.  Doubtless the Germans do the same at home.  It’s part of the game.”

“Oh, I suppose so,” Sophie admitted.  “But what a horror this war must be for those helpless people who are caught in its sweep.”

“If it affects you like that, be thankful it isn’t over here,” Carr said lightly.  “War is all that Sherman said it was.  As a matter of fact modern warfare with every scientific and chemical means of destruction at its hand can’t result in anything but horror piled on horror.  I look for some startling—­”