"Then I got the paper with its big black headlines. Germany struck on
the twenty-first. She makes big claims of guns and prisoners taken.
General Haig reports that 'severe fighting continues.' I don't like the
sound of that last expression.
"We all find we cannot do any work that requires concentration of
thought. So we all knit furiously, because we can do that mechanically.
At least the dreadful waiting is over--the horrible wondering where and
when the blow will fall. It has fallen--but they shall not prevail
against us!
"Oh, what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this,
sitting here in my room with my journal before me? Jims is asleep in his
crib and the wind is wailing around the window; over my desk hangs
Walter's picture, looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes; the Mona
Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs on one side of it,
and on the other a framed copy of "The Piper." It seems to me that I can
hear Walter's voice repeating it--that little poem into which he put
his soul, and which will therefore live for ever, carrying Walter's name
on through the future of our land. Everything about me is calm and
peaceful and 'homey.' Walter seems very near me--if I could just sweep
aside the thin wavering little veil that hangs between, I could see him
--just as he saw the Pied Piper the night before Courcelette.
"Over there in France tonight--does the line hold?"
CHAPTER XXVIII
BLACK SUNDAY
In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must
have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever
held before in the history of the world.
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