2 Bedford Rd.
Liscord, Jan. 15, 1915.
My very dear Friend:
It is strange to see it (a Christmas Calendar) in the hands of the dear brave lads in khaki as I have done this Christmas time. Alas! they will all be going out to the Front this February. I have kept open house for Jeanie and her special girl friends and their boy friends too this holiday -- and not one of them but has someone specially dear, caught in this awful war net. Numbers of the mere boys who went down in the Formidable were lads from this district, trained in the Conway. And the look in the eyes of those dear thoughtful lads, -- oh my dear, dear friend --
And the wounded soldiers are home and the tales they tell -- hundreds of them far worse wounded by winter agonies of damp and frost bite than ever by shot and shell. My doctor tells me that he never thought the human body could get into such a condition and survive. Others are home with bowel troubles, piles out as big as cannon balls, who can never be well again or move without pain. They lie on their faces groaning day and night. And these young men, many of them, [page 2] have been ill too and in the hospital with the severities of tent life, etc., in the training camps, -- and they see clearly what lies ahead of them. And my visitors at any rate have the least fire of hate or bitterness against the Germans to help them. They have outgrown war and all its horrors -- yet they are caught in its trap ***
Just a Glen story to end this woman's rush at the tired end of a day. He had heard us tell of the awful torpedoing of the Formidable, -- and for the first time seemed to realize that it was done on purpose -- I was upstairs dusting, and in he comes:
"Mother, Jesus loves Life Boats, doesn't he?" "Yes dearie, of course he does." "But he hates Death [Boats], doesn't he?" "Death [Boats]?" "Yes, those cruel submarines."
What could I do but catch him up and hug him and tell him, -- "Yes, yes, yes, Jesus hates him -- and we must hate them and persuade all other men and women to hate them to." ***
P. S. The right of Belgium to win peace on the basis of her reinstatement proves clearer every day. Brailsford and Levinson are saying they have positive proof that a majority of the Belgium cabinet was in favor of "non-resistance" as neutral. But that the King who, like Sir Edward Grey had his secret compact with France and England, overpowered them and rushed the whole situation and the country to ruin. The Entente dragged the war to the west. If we had held true to the old light of Liberty under Gladstone and Morley only Germany and Russia, Czar and Kaiser -- would have been involved and the whole western world saved for more and more freedom.
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