Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-03
TALKS BY
BEATRICE FAIRFAX

Several letters have come to me
from women who have their soldier
sweethearts and husbands safely
back from "Over There" but who
are sorely puzzled by the change
that has come over them.
In every case, the men in question
| have been in the front line trenches,
and have gone through the shot and
shell of those last terrible, fighting
days. They felt. rather than heard,
! the numbing silence - more awful
/ than the din - that began at IL
! o'clock, that fateful November morn
| ing when the order to cease firing"
was given.
1T was the silence that got me
I could stand everything but that,
one woman quoted her husband as
] saying, and she goes on to say that
I after the first enthusiasm of home
coming was over, he seemed to care
for nothing but to sit quietly and
think. The old amusements about
| which he had been so keen, before
| he went to France, now fell tiat, and
even the especial interest of gar
den, that formerly occupied every
spare moment, fails to exercise any
! charm.
There seems to be nothing else
to suggest to those women but to
wait and let time, the all-healing
| unguent, work its habitual miracle.
Some men are pre- -eminently fitted
to be soldiers, men of rugged
fibre, iron nerve, slow sensibilities,
such are capable of shedding the
! narrowing specter of war by rea-
son of their temperament.
Others. more sensitive, are OBJ
sessed by their experiences, and
find it impossible to eradicate war
| impressions Immediately. They live
over and over these scenes, until
something more compelling comes
along to replace them, or until time
gets in its handiwork.
| Quiet the Best Rcstorcr
This period of adjustment is the
time for a conscientious wife to be
what Sir Walter Scott calls IA min
istering angel" Produce pipe. slip
pers and house coat and be prepared
to cultivate a sympathetic silence.
if that is what is demanded by the
lacerated nerves of your man. Don't
expect one who has just escaped
death-and has seen his friends drop
around him by the score-to call for
his dancing pumps and betake HIM
self to the nearest cabaret as soon as
he has hung up his trench helmet.
However. it is all a question of
nerves and their sensitiveness to
receiving and retaining impressions.
The cabaret may be exactly the
medicine that will work wonders in
/ restoring a certain type, it may give
| the necessary stimulus craved. or,
again, it may be an added horror.
So If you are a wife, or a sweet
/ heart, and are puzzled by having a
soldier man given to long. deep re-
Election, don't despair, it may be
only natures way of restoring the
balance. 1t is hardly fair to expect
a sensitive man who has been
through the hell of the trenches to
come back to you as if he had re.
turned from a jolly weekend, and is
feeling particularly fit after the ex-
! perience.
In the first enthusiasm of getting
| back 1t may even seem that way,
but the energy for. frivolity is more
than apt to flag, and a pipe and
/ slippers to win the day.
| A correspondent who signs her
self Louise" is feeling particularly
discouraged at this state of affairs.
She was married pust before her
| husband sailed for France, and she
has taken great pride in her 10y
atty, sternly declining to attend any
of the meetings of the dancing club,
of which they were both enthusiasts
tic members before the war began.
She had fully expected to find her
young husband quite as keen on
dancing after he got back as he was
before he sailed. And I think, in
spite of all her determination to be
a model wife. she is beginning to
feel just a little sorry for herself.
Louise tells me that she is just
eighteen SO it is not difficult to
understand why she expects her
man to display the customary ardor
that he had before he went march
ing off. He has been through an
experience that is likely to eXer-
else a SOLDERING influence for years,
if not for life.
No man can have been through
the hell and glory of Chateau
Thierry and not have reached the
climax of human emotion. He has
taken part in the greatest conflict
the world has ever known. He has
drunk his coffee in the gray of
early morning with his comrades.
and at night he has come back
without them. He has made a crony
of death, week in and week out in
the trenches, and there have been
times when death would have been
easier than living.
Whatever life has to offer in the
way of emotion. keyed to the ut
most limit, the men who fought dur
! ing those last days experienced to
! the full. And a man cannot drain
the cup to the dregg and in a few
weeks accomm odate himself to the
! pace of suburban husband. inter
ested in his former dancing club and
/ the lawn mower
/ He can easily manage to drop
back into his old place if he went
II over there and got no further than