Yet from the other side were coming methods of war so wantonly cruel,
so useless save as inflicting needless agony, as only hate could devise.
No strategic value justified them. They were spontaneous outgrowths of
venom, nursed during the winter deadlock and now grown to full size and
destructive power.
The rumor of a gas that seared and killed came to the little house as
early as February. In March there came the first victims, poor writhing
creatures, deprived of the boon of air, their seared lungs collapsed
and agonized, their faces drawn into masks of suffering. Some of them
died in the little house, and even after death their faces held the
imprint of horror.
To Sara Lee, burying her own anxiety under the cloak of service, there
came new and terrible thoughts. This was not war. The Germans had sent
their clouds of poisoned gas across the inundation, but had made no
attempt to follow. This was killing, for the lust of killing; suffering,
for the joy of inflicting pain.
And a day or so later she heard of The Hague Convention. She had not
known of it before. Now she learned of that gentlemen's agreement among
nations, and that it said: "The use of poison or of poisoned weapons is
forbidden." She pondered that carefully, trying to think dispassionately.
Now and then she received a copy of a home newspaper, and she saw that
the use of poison gases was being denied by Germans in America and set
down to rumor and hysteria.
So, on a cold spring day, she sat down at the table in the salle a manger
and wrote a letter to the President, beginning "Dear Sir"; and telling
what she knew of poison gas. She also, on second thought, wrote one to
Andrew Carnegie, who had built a library in her city. She felt that
the expense to him of sending some one over to investigate would not be
prohibitive, and something must be done.
She never heard from either of her letters, but she felt better for
having written them. And a day or two later she received from Mrs.
Travers, in England, a small supply of the first gas masks of the war.
Simple and primitive they were, those first masks; useless, too, as it
turned out--a square of folded gauze, soaked in some solution and then
dried, with tapes to tie it over the mouth and nose. To adjust them the
soldiers had but to stoop and wet them in the ever-present water in
the trench, and then to tie them on.
Sara Lee gave them out that night, and there was much mirth in the little
house, such mirth as there had not been since Henri went away. The
Belgians called it a bal masque, and putting them on bowed before one
another and requested dances, and even flirted coyly with each other over
their bits of white gauze. And in the very middle of the gayety some
one propounded one of Henri's idiotic riddles; and Sara Lee went across
to her little room and closed the door and stood there with her eyes
shut, for fear she would scream.