for weeks. I like to keep it up regularly, for father says a diary of the years of the war should be a very interesting thing to hand down to one’s children. The trouble is, I like to write a few personal things in this blessed old book that might not be exactly what I’d want my children to read. I feel that I shall be a far greater stickler for propriety in regard to them than I am for myself!
“The first week in June was another dreadful one. The Austrians seemed just on the point of overrunning Italy: and then came the first awful news of the Battle of Jutland, which the Germans claimed as a great victory. I shall never forget that day. We just gave up completely. If the British navy had failed us what was there to trust to? ‘I feel as if I had received a staggering blow in the face from a trusted friend,’ said Miss Oliver, and I think we all had just the same sensation. Susan was the only one who carried on. ‘You need never tell me that the Kaiser has defeated the British Navy,’ she said, with a contemptuous sniff. ‘It is all a German lie and that you may tie to.’ And when a couple of days later we found out that she was right and that it had been a British victory instead of a British defeat, we had to put up with a great many ‘I told you so’s,’ but we endured them very comfortably.
“It took Kitchener’s death to finish Susan. For the first time I saw her down and out. We all felt the shock of it but Susan plumbed the deeps of despair. The news came at night by ’phone but Susan wouldn't believe it until she saw the Enterprise headline the next day. She did not cry or faint or go into hysterics; but she forgot to put salt in the soup and that is some-
