Of course the men are not all dead—­“they’re just away.”  And they come back on leave.  But life is not normal.  War is abnormal, and there is an ever-urging desire of life to assume its normal function.  So all over Europe we heard whispers about the moral break-down among the women of England.  In England we were asked about the dreadful things that were happening in France.  The things that were happening in France were not essentially evil things.  One could imagine that if God thinks war is necessary for the solution of the world’s terrible problems, He will have no trouble forgiving these lapses that follow in the wake of war in France.  And in England, similarly we found that the moral break-down was not a moral break-down at all.  The abnormal relation of the sexes arising out of war produced somewhat the same results that one found in France, but in different ways.  In France too many strange men are billeted in the houses of the people.  In England, too many homes are without men at all.  And sheer social lonesomeness produces in humanity about the same conditions that arise when people are thrown in too close contact.  There is a sort of social balance of nature, wherein normally desirable results are found.  The girl working in the munition factories, working at top speed eight hours a day, filled with a big emotional desire to do her full duty to her country every second of the day, finds it easy in her eight hours of rest to fall in love with a soldier who is going out to offer his life for the country for which she is giving her strength so gladly.  She is not a light woman.  She is moved by deep and beautiful emotions.  And if a marriage before he goes out to fight is inconvenient or impossible—­the war made it so, and God will understand.  Of course the idle woman, the vain woman, the foolish woman in these times in England finds ample excuse for her folly and vast opportunity to indulge her folly in the social turmoil of the war.  And she is going the pace.  Her men are gone, who restrain her, and she has nothing in her head or her heart to hold, and she is in evidence.  Her type always exaggerates its importance, and fools people into thinking that her name is Legion, and that Mr. Legion is an extensive polygamist, with a raft of daughters and sisters and cousins and aunts.  But she is small in numbers and she is not important.  She is merely conspicuous, and the moral break-down in England, that one hears of in the baited breath of the continent, is an illusion.

The elevator girl at Bucklands Hotel in London was a bright, black-eyed, good looking woman in her late twenties.  She wore a green uniform with a crimson voile boudoir cap and as the American stepped inside the slow-going car, she answered his “good morning” with a respectful, “good morning, sir.”  Being a good traveller, it seemed to me wise to prepare to while away the tedium of the long easy journey to the fourth floor with a friendly chat.

“Any of your relatives in the war?” This from me by way of an ice-breaker.