The Sword of Deborah

h more splendid, so far beyond praise, that the less one says of anyone else the better. That sentence is dead, let us hope, fallen into the same limbo as "Business as Usual" and the rest of

n" and "women." Also, to tell the truth, the idea of going so far behind the lines did not appeal. For this there is the excuse that in England one grows so sick of the people who talk of "going to the Front" when they mean going to some safe chateau as a base for a personally conducted tour, or-Conscientious objectors are the worst sinners in this latter class-when they are going to sit at canteens or paint huts a hundred miles or

he suffering and death immediately under one's eyes still a new thing; if I had felt it again, even more strongly, when I went right up to the very back of the front in the French war zone for the Croix Rouge, in those poor little hospitals where the stretchers are always ready in the wards to hustle the wounded away, and where, in devast

ttack of khaki-itis, was spotted as the pard with badges and striped as the zebra. Almost simultaneously with this eruption came, for the other section of the feminine community, reaction from it. We others became rather se

int of view of the un-uniformed changed. The thing was no longer a game at which women were making silly asses of themselves and pr

because there still are women who have their photographs taken in a new uniform every week, but more because of

l those, what would my conversion be worth? Who, already convinced of religion, is amazed at attaining salvatio

string of boredom, never. And the only thing that worries anyone sent on such a quest as mine, and with the inevitable message to deliver at the end of it, is that terrible feeling that no matter how really one feels enthusiasm, how

t make you believe it. But let me also assure you that I too am-or shall I say was?-Superior, that I too have laughed the laugh of sophistication at enthusiasm, that I too know enough to consider vehemence

r there, let me add that I was careful to sponge my mind free of all preconceived notions, either for or against, when once it was settled that I should go. I went withou

st, but predisposition for; and just as a juryman, when he is empanelled, should try and sweep his mind bare of everything he has heard about the case before, so should the Special Missioner-to coin a

ever conscientious one is, and that is why I am glad that my former attitude was, if not inimical, at least very unent

l remained outward show, the soul that informed the whole evaded me, and for many days I saw things that I only understood later in view of subsequent knowledge, when I could look back and s

bring a contraction at once of pity and of pride to the heart. For, on these great charts, that are mapped out into squares and look exactly like temperature charts at a hospital, are drawn curves, like the curves that show the fever of a patient. Up in jagged mountains, down into merciful valle

drawn numbered curves zigzagging across them

l." War is abnormal, and there is not a point of these chart

ld of War himself. Here he is nursed, rested, fed with food for the mouths of flesh and blood, and food for the mouths of iron; here, the whole time, night and day, as ceaselessly as in the trenches, the work goe

driven by a woman. Not only the fever rate of War is shown on those charts, but just as to the seeing eye, behind any temperature-chart in a hospital, is the whole construction of the great scheme-doctors, surgeons, nurses, food, drugs, money, devotion, everything that finds its expression in that simple sheet of paper filled in daily as a matter of routine, so behind thes