It seemed that back here in the United States he had a little son, from whom he had received no word whatsoever in more than six months. The child was with the major's divorced wife, and his father was more than anxious to know if he was regularly playing out of doors, if he was receiving his father's allotment, and if he was buying the promised Thrift Stamp each week. The army man already had his second golden service stripe and greatly feared that his little son might be beginning to forget him.
Under conditions such as these, visiting the boy was a diplomatic mission indeed. Finally it was intrusted to the wife of an army officer. And because army officers' wives are usually achieved diplomats if not born ones, the ultimate result came in weekly letters from the boy, which not only greatly relieved his father's mind but greatly increased the bonds of affection between the two. The Greatest Mother in the World is never above diplomacy--which is, perhaps, just another way of expressing tact and gentleness.
There were many, many occasions, too, when the relatives at home depended upon that selfsame diplomacy of hers to tell the disagreeable stories of losses or perhaps to prepare the boys overseas to face an empty chair in the family circle. There was one particularly fearful moment when a brilliant young officer had to be told that the reason why his young wife had ceased to write was because she had gone insane and specialists believed that she could not recover. Boys were driven to Red Cross offices by hidden affairs that flayed them hideously and of which they wished to purge themselves. Some wanted to set old wrongs right. Others had fallen blindly into the hands of the unscrupulous and had only fully awakened to see their folly after they actually were upon the battlefields of France. Then there were the softer phases of life--the shy letters and the blushing visitors who wished to have a marriage arranged with Thérèse or Jeanne of the black eyes and the delicate oval face. I remember one of our boys who had fallen in love with a girl in Nancy. Theirs was a courtship of unspoken love, unless soft glances and gentle caresses do indeed speak more loudly than mere words; for they had no easy bond of a common tongue. His French was doughboy French, which was hardly French at all, and her English was limited. So that after he had gone on to the Rhine and the letter came from her to him in the delicate hand that the sisters at the convent had taught, he needs must seek out Red Cross Home Communication and intrust to it the task of uncommon delicacy, which it fulfilled to the complete delight and satisfaction of both of them. For how could any mother, let alone the Greatest Mother in the World, blind her eyes entirely to love?