August 4th, 1914 The French nursery-maid gave us our tooth-brushes
with a strip of pink tooth-paste spread out on the bristles. I saw to my amazement that she was crying; it was an unprecedented ?thing for a grown-up to do. We were too shy to ask her what the trouble was, but I suppose she saw that we were disconcerted and felt that she ought to explain. She said that a war had started. To us this seemed interesting rather than sad; we received the news with debonair curiosity. Sobbing, she told us that many soldiers would be killed, that war was terrible. We didn't challenge these statements, but one of us said something (I can't remember what) which showed that we disapproved of her crying, even if there was going to be a war. She said that we didn't understand, that dreadful things would happen. On one of the shelves of the bathroom cup- board there was a flat papier-mache model of a burning stockade, a sort of backcloth which had originally belonged to a set of cowboys and Indians. "Will there be things like that ? " I asked. She said that there would. Slightly awed, (for it was a tremendously lurid conflagration), we began to clean our teeth.
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