STARTING POINT. “It was in those intolerable days of 1917 when Russia
had fallen away and America seemed perilously unready; when German
intrigue helped by treachery behind the allied lines in France, England
and Italy was winning the war for Germany; intolerable to those of
soldier blood whose years put them beyond the dead line of enlistment
requirements and who could do nothing more than work and earn and give
over here.
I was haunted interminably by the suffering of the women of France
whose men had died on the field of honor--wasted suffering if, in the
end, the German won. I knew the women would fight against any--is there
a stronger adjective of horror now than _Germanic_ odds? How could
these widowed women, or even the dead bear it--and in a flash “The
White Battalion” came.
Always the supernatural stories “flash” in this way, apparently in
answer to a long sub-conscious demand for justice beyond human power to
compass. Other stories build more or less painfully, save for the big
scene.”--_Frances Gilchrist Wood._