are able to sleep) after the shrieking of shells and the screaming of shrapnel, by women's soft voices coming from a long way off, pausing by their beds and dying away, will be stirred up to their throbbing hearts and quivering lips by God knows what memories of home and kindred. We know, too, that even where the wounded are our enemy's, not our own, the scene will be the same, and that it will make no difference to our women nursing in our hospitals that the stricken men lying in the beds as they pass are German soldiers, and that they are dreaming of their German homes. And that is why we also know that, sooner or later, come what may, we must win this war—because the heart of a nation is the thing it lives by, and the heart of our England is sound.
note.—I have been glad to learn, since the foregoing chapter was written and printed, that by order of the Ministry of Munitions, the munitions workers (unless prevented by military exigencies) will have a short holiday at Christmas. I am told, however, that the order will not be of universal applicability, and that, with certain limitations, my picture of the war activities of Great Britain at Christmastide will generally apply
