They could nurse. They could
run canteens. Oeuvres. She wanted to show France what her friends, her
countrywomen, could do.
But the war would be over in three months....Only Judge Lawton believed
it would be a long war. Others hardly comprehended there was a war at
all....Such things don't happen in these days. (Who in that wondrous
smiling land could think upon war anywhere?)...It would be too funny if
it were not for those dreadful pictures of the Belgian refugees....Poor
things....Maria and other good women immediately began knitting
for them...sat for hours on the verandahs, all in white, knitting,
knitting...but talking of anything of war....It simply was a horrid
dream and soon would be over....Their husbands all said so...three
months....German army irresistible...modern implements of war must
annihilate whole armies very quickly, and the Germans had the most and
the best....Rotten shame (said Burlingame) and the Germans not even good
sportsmen.
James Kirkpatrick, who avoided his former pupils, consoled himself with the
thought that at least Britain would be licked...she'd get what was coming
to her, all right, and Ireland would be free....Anyhow it would soon be
over....When April nineteen-seventeen came he damned the socialist party
for its attitude and enlisted: "I was a man and an American first, wasn't
I?" he wrote to Alexina. "I guess your flag...oh, hell! (Excuse me.
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