Gertrude
clapped her hands. I wanted to laugh and cry, mother's eyes flashed with
their old-time starriness and Susan emitted a queer sound between a gasp
and a whoop.
"This will not comfort the Kaiser much,' she said.
"Then we went to bed, but were too excited to sleep. Really, as Susan
said solemnly this morning, 'Mrs. Dr. dear, I think politics are too
strenuous for women.'"
31st December 1917
"Our fourth War Christmas is over. We are trying to gather up some
courage wherewith to face another year of it. Germany has, for the most
part, been victorious all summer. And now they say she has all her
troops from the Russian front ready for a 'big push' in the spring.
Sometimes it seems to me that we just cannot live through the winter
waiting for that.
"I had a great batch of letters from overseas this week. Shirley is at
the front now, too, and writes about it all as coolly and
matter-of-factly as he used to write of football at Queen's. Carl wrote
that it had been raining for weeks and that nights in the trenches
always made him think of the night of long ago when he did penance in
the graveyard for running away from Henry Warren's ghost. Carl's letters
are always full of jokes and bits of fun. They had a great rat-hunt the
night before he wrote--spearing rats with their bayonets--and he got
the best bag and won the prize. He has a tame rat that knows him and
sleeps in his pocket at night.
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