"No work for artists these days," he said.

No work in a community of workers where every link of the chain of
economic life had been broken. No work for the next man, a
chauffeur, or the next, a brass worker; the next, a teamster; the next,
a bank clerk; the next, a doorkeeper of a Government office; whilst
the wives of those who still had work were buying in the only market
they had. But the husbands of some were not at home. Each answer
about the absent one had an appeal that nothing can picture better
than the simple words or the looks that accompanied the words.

"The last I heard of my husband he was fighting at Dixmude--two
months ago."

"Mine is wounded, somewhere in France."

"Mine was with the army, too. I don't know whether he is alive or
dead. I have not heard since Brussels was taken. He cannot get my
letters and I cannot get his."

"Mine was killed at Liege, but we have a son."

So you out in Nebraska who gave a handful of wheat might know that
said handful of wheat reached its destination in an empty stomach. If
you sent a suit of clothes, or a cap, or a pair of socks, come along to
the skating-rink, where ice-polo was played and matches and
carnivals were held in better days, and look on at the boxes, packed
tight with gifts of every manner of thing that men and women and
children wear except silk hats, which are being opened and sorted
and distributed into hastily-constructed cribs and compartments.