Sara Lee's vague thinking began to crystallize. This war was not
a judgment sent from on high to a sinful world. It was the wicked
imposition of one nation on other nations. It was national. It was
almost racial. But most of all it was a war of hate on the German
side. She had never believed in hate. There were ugly passions in the
world--jealousy, envy, suspicion; but not hate. The word was not in her
rather limited vocabulary.

There was no hate on the part of the men she knew. The officers who
stopped in on their way to and from the trenches were gentlemen and
soldiers. They were determined and grave; they resented, they even
loathed. But they did not hate. The little Belgian soldiers were
bewildered, puzzled, desperately resentful. But of hate, as translated
into terms of frightfulness, they had no understanding.

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.