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An excerpt from the beginning of:
PART II
"True to One's Orbit and the Service of Shining"
CHAPTER XIV
THE CALL TO ARMS
IT has come at last—the call to arms—the biggest thing that may ever be my lot to record in all my life, or the life of my country. So I have hunted up this old book of Memoirs that I have not written in for months, in order that I may put down the date.
April 6, 1917. On thiss day the United States declared war against Germany!
Far down the street a band is playing, and in every direction flags are flying in the warm April breeze. All Washington is a-flutter with banners. The girls are so excited that they can't talk of anything else. Some of them have been in tears ever since the announcement came. Many of them have brothers in Yale or Princeton or Harvard who've only been waiting for this to break away and enlist. Not that the girls don't glory in the fact that they've got someone to go, just as I glory in the thought that Father is in the service. But we've been on a fearful nervous strain ever since the last of January, when Germany declared she'd sink at sight all vessels found in certain zones, and those zones are the very waters where our ships are obliged to go.
Lillian Locke's Uncle Charlie went down in one of the merchant ships they sank last month. He was her favorite uncle, and most of us girls knew him. He came to the school twice last year, and whenever he sent Lillian "eats" he sent enough for her to treat the entire class. Then there is Duffield, and Bailey Burr ell and Watson Tucker all off on the high seas somewhere. Sometimes at vespers when we sing:
"O hear us when we cry to Thee
For those in peril on the sea,"
the thought of Father and of all those boys who danced with us just a year ago, and who went marching so gaily across the green mall, chokes me so that I can't sing another note. Sometimes all over the chapel voices waver and stop till only the organ is left to finish it alone.
We Seniors have voted to cut out all frills in our Commencement exercises, and give the money to the Red Cross. We're going to wear simple white shirt-waist suits. It'll make it such a plain affair it won't be worthwhile for our families to come on to see us get our diplomas.
Barby is coming anyhow, and I know she'll be disappointed. She has all the old-time ideas about flowers and fluffy ruffles for the "sweet girl graduates. '' She had them herself, with so many presents and congratulations that her graduation was almost as grand an occasion as her wedding. Her Aunt Barbara's pearl necklace which she inherited was handed over to her then, and I think she has visions of my wearing it on the same stage, on the occasion of my Commencement. There are only a few strands in the necklace and the pearls are quite small, though exquisitely beautiful, but, of course, I couldn't wear it with just a plain shirtwaist.
