I HAVE had a talk with Sonya. For three months now I have been mothering and watching over her, but we never spoke of anything except commonplaces, of this new country so strange to her, and how little things are done differently here. But yesterday we had a talk. I am very glad. And it is better for Sonya, too, for she has told me the whole story.
When Sonya came to me, a poor little Jewish war refugee, I was only told that she was a rabbi’s daughter and that both her parents were dead. I did not ask anything else, either of her or of those who persuaded me to mother her for awhile. She was a broken, suffering thing, dignified with the silence of sorrow. In her eyes and about her mouth was that look—I never saw it before the war— peculiar to those who come now from Europe and who know unspeakable things. It says: “Do not ask me ‘anything.” She was little and helpless and infinitely far removed.
“How old are you, Sonya?” 1 asked her then. “Are you about fourteen years old?”
"Yes," she answered.
Her hair was thin and short, but glossy black and curling in ringlets, and she wore it then, and still wears it now, hanging down to her shoulders and tied with a ribbon at her neck.
A few weeks later she said to me: "I told you I was fourteen years old. It is not true. I am over twenty." And she added: "But please let me be a little girl. I don't want to be a woman."
And I have let her be my little girl.
Sonya gets the Yiddish papers and she reads them. We never spoke of the war, no, nor of anything but commonplaces. She fits sweetly into the Jewish observance in my home; in the synagogue she loses her strangeness. But we never discussed Jewish problems nor any problems. She is a Zionist, quite as a matter of course. No discussions there, either. But who would discuss anything with a little tired, broken orphan? It is enough just to live, to smile, to be acquiescently pleasant. For Sonya never has complained or wept.
But Sonya has shown one horror, one deep negative emotion. She cannot bear to see soldiers. She runs from the window when one passes. She turns her head away in the street. And we have not discussed that either—until yesterday.
Sonya is knitting baby blankets for the Jewish refugees. She knits very well and rapidly. Yesterday she said to me: "Why shouldn't I be knitting also something for soldiers? It would be good."
I looked at her in surprise. She rose, laid down her knitting, came and sat on the floor at my feet, as she often did, and laid her head in my lap.
"Let us talk about it," she said.
"About what?" I asked.
"About the war," she said.
"Sonya," I asked, "do you really want to?"
"Yes, I really want to. My heart will break if I don't talk."
The Mother
After awhile she continued: ‘‘ Why shouldn’t I knit also for the soldiers, because the soldier might be my man. They are men, too, the enldiers ”’
"But you may knit for the soldiers; you may do anything you please," I told her.
"Ya, ya," she answered, "I know. But I hate soldiers. Oh, I hate war."
"Who does not, Sonya?"
- = EEE ES BON “Then who makes it, if everyone hates it?” cried Sonya. “TI don’t believe you hate it. You like it! You like to hate it. How can they make music and uniforms and all those things? And yet the soldiers are men. Who made war, if people all hate it? God. maybe?
“TI know,” said Sonya. She sat erect and looked at me with frightened eyes. “God made it as a punishment. I remember in the Tanach how angry the prophets were. When the nations did wrong God sent Nebuchadnezzar to punish them. And now he sent the Kaiser.”
"That may be so, Sonya."
“T read it in the paper,” she said, “how when the Kaiser beat the Italian army, he said it was a judgment of God. He was right. It was a judgment. But that is not the end. Afterward the Kaiser will be judged.”
"Then, Sonya, don't we have to beat the Kaiser?"
“Maybe,” she said, “that is a punishment, too, to have to beat him. They are all, all bad. Don’t I know? Russians and Germans—I don’t know which was worse to me. And now they say the Russians won’t fight, and you Americans are angry. And they are right and wrong. They can’t help it, those Russians. They didn’t make the war, but now they stop fighting, and the Kaiser will have everything he wants. They are beaten. But if we had had our revolution in 1905! Do you know why we didn’t have our revolution in 1905?”
"Why?"
“Because England lent money to the Czar to beat the Duma. That is the same England which helped the Czar choke Persia, too. Half the time England makes free and half the time she makes slaves. She can’t blame the Russians.”
"Sonya, you have thought it out. Now what shall we do?"
"Yes," she said, "I have thought it out, but I don't know what to do. Only, I think I should knit for soldiers now."
"Why, Sonya?"
"Because we are all bad, but the Kaiser is worst. He made the war, but if no one else had wanted wars he could not have made the war. He is the whip God is using to punish us all. Oh, what did I do that was wrong? I was only a little girl, but also I could have been a socialist. I knew about it. I read. But I was in love and I married and stayed home."
So Sonya was married. I did not ask her any questions; I waited, my respect growing every moment.
“Now you are in the war,” said Sonya, “and at first I was angry. I asked, why should also you go in the war? Why didn’t you keep clean from all this horridness and murder? Why didn’t you make the others be reasonable by reasoning instead of fighting? I think so now, that you should