windows of Fifth Avenue as the exhibit of a pair of ladies' silk hose
inset with lace, price one hundred dollars.

Meanwhile, she was knitting socks or mufflers, I forget which, for the
Allies. Her confusion about war news was common to the whole country,
which heard the special pleading of both sides without any
cross-questioning by an attorney. She remarked how the Allies' bulletins
said that the Allies were winning and the German bulletins that the
Germans were winning; but so far as she could see on the map the armies
remained in much the same positions and the wholesale killing continued.
Her interest, I learned on further inquiry, was limited and partisan.
When the Germans had won a victory, she refused to read about it and
threw down her paper in disgust.

There was something human in her attitude, as human as the war itself.
It was a reminder of how far away from the Mississippi is the Somme; how
broad is the Atlantic; how impossible it is to project yourself into the
distance even in the days of the wireless. She was moving in the orbit
of her affairs, with its limitations, just as the soldiers were in
theirs. Before the war luxury was as common in Paris as in New York; but
with so ghastly a struggle proceeding in Europe it seemed out of keeping
that the joy of living should endure anywhere in the world. Yet Europe
was tranquilly going its way when the Southern States were suffering
pain and hardship worse than any that France and England have known.
Paris and London were dining and smiling when Richmond was in flames.

War can be brought home to no community until its own sons are dying and
risking death. In nothing are we so much the creatures of our
surroundings as in war. For the first few weeks when I was at home, a
nation going its way in an era of prosperity had an aspect of vulgarity;