24 November.—­This long wait is trying us a bit high.  There is literally nothing to do.  We arrange pathetic little programmes for ourselves.  To-day I shall lunch with Mr. Cunard, and see the lace he has bought:  yesterday I did some shopping with Captain Smith:  one day I sew at Lady Georgina’s work-party.

Heavens, what a life!  I realise that for years I have not drawn rein, and I am sure I don’t require holidays.  Moses was a wise man, and he knew that one day in seven is rest enough for most humans.  I always “keep the Sabbath,” and it is all the rest I want.  Even here I might write and get on with something, but there is something paralysing about the place, and my brain won’t work.  I can’t even write a diary!  Everyone is depressed and everyone longs to be out of Petrograd.  To-day we hear that the Swedes have closed the Haparanda line, and Archangel is frozen, so here we are.

Now I have got to work at the hospital.  There are 25,000 amputation cases in Petrograd.  The men at my hospital are mostly convalescent, but, of course, their wounds require dressing.  This is never done in their beds, as the English plan is, but each man is carried in turn to the “salle des pansements,” and is laid on an operating-table and has his fresh dressings put on, and is then carried back to bed again.  It is a good plan, I think.  The hospital keeps me busy all the morning.  Once more I begin to see severed limbs and gashed flesh, and the old question arises, “Why, what evil hath he done?” This war is the crucifixion of the youth of the world.

[Page Heading:  “SPEAKING ONE’S MIND”]

In a way I am learning something here.  For instance, I have always disliked “explanations” and “speaking one’s mind,” etc., etc., more than I can say.  I dare say I have chosen the path of least resistance in these matters.  Here one must speak out sometimes, and speak firmly.  It isn’t all “being pleasant.”  One girl has been consistently rude to me.  To-day, poor soul, I gave her a second sermon on our way back from church; but, indeed she has numerous opportunities in this war, and she is wasting them all on gossip, and prejudices, and petty jealousies.  So we had a straight talk, and I hope she didn’t hate it.  At any rate, she has promised amendment of life.  One hears of men that “this war gives them a chance to distinguish themselves.”  Women ought to distinguish themselves, too.

    “Hesper!  Venus! were we native to their splendour, or in Mars,
    We should see this world we live in, fairest of their evening stars. 
    Who could dream of wars and tumults, hate and envy, sin and spite,
    Roaring London, raving Paris, in that spot of peaceful light? 
    Might we not, in looking heavenward on a star so silver fair,
    Yearn and clasp our hands and murmur, ’Would to God that
        we were there!’”

Always when I see war, and boys with their poor dead faces turned up to the sky, and their hands so small in death, and when I see wounded men, and hear of soldiers going out of the trenches with a laugh and a joke to cut wire entanglements, knowing they will not come back, then I am ashamed of meanness and petty spite.  So my poor young woman got a “fair dose of it” this morning, and when she had gulped once or twice I think she felt better.