One would have
supposed that the war fever would have raged most furiously in
the countries actually under fire, and that the others would be
more reasonable. Belgium and Flanders, where over large districts
literally not one stone was left upon another as the opposed
armies drove each other back and forward over it after terrific
preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving
their feelings more emphatically than by shrugging their
shoulders and saying, "C'est la guerre." England, inviolate for
so many centuries that the swoop of war on her homesteads had
long ceased to be more credible than a return of the Flood, could
hardly be expected to keep her temper sweet when she knew at last
what it was to hide in cellars and underground railway stations,
or lie quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, houses crumbled, and
aircraft guns distributed shrapnel on friend and foe alike until
certain shop windows in London, formerly full of fashionable
hats, were filled with steel helmets. Slain and mutilated women
and children, and burnt and wrecked dwellings, excuse a good deal
of violent language, and produce a wrath on which many suns go
down before it is appeased. Yet it was in the United States of
America where nobody slept the worse for the war, that the war
fever went beyond all sense and reason.
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