... So, without thinking of it once
in his lifetime, he had been a civilian, a layman, a non-Catholic, a
Gentile, white, free, and well....
As the American troops were poured into the French and British trenches
he began to find the names of many Harvard men among the casualties
recorded in the Army and Navy Journal. But for all the sweat and blood
the situation appeared unchanged, and he saw no prospect of the war's
ending in the perceptible future. In the old chronicles the right wing
of one army always defeated the left wing of the other, the left wing
being, meanwhile, vanquished by the enemy's right. After that the
mercenaries fled. It had been so simple, in those days, almost as if
prearranged....
Gloria wrote that she was reading a great deal. What a mess they had
made of their affairs, she said. She had so little to do now that she
spent her time imagining how differently things might have turned out.
Her whole environment appeared insecure--and a few years back she had
seemed to hold all the strings in her own little hand....
In June her letters grew hurried and less frequent. She suddenly ceased
to write about coming South.
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