to put together a small corner of the great picture of Germany which it
will be necessary to keep clear and naked before us in the future if
the world is to be saved.

I am publishing the letters just as they came to me, leaving out
nothing. We no longer in these days belong to small circles, to
limited little groups. We have been stripped of our secrecies and of
our private hoards. We live in a great relationship. We share our
griefs; and anything there is of love and happiness, any smallest
expression of it, should be shared too. This is why I am leaving out
nothing in the letters.

The war killed Christine, just as surely as if she had been a soldier
in the trenches. I will not write of her great gift, which was
extraordinary. That too has been lost to the world, broken and thrown
away by the war.

I never saw her again. I had a telegram saying she was dead. I tried
to go to Stuttgart, but was turned back at the frontier. The two last
letters, the ones from Halle and from Wurzburg, reached me after I knew
that she was dead.

ALICE CHOLMONDELEY,
London, May, 1917.




Publishers' Note