The Henson Journals

[179]

Saturday, September 28th, 1918.

1515th day

Weather fine, but curiously cold. Good news from abroad. Bulgaria is reported to have asked for an armistice, which of course has been refused. A large new offensive in France proceeds bravely. In Palestine Allenby's victory is seen to be complete. At home the Government is plucking up courage to deal firmly with the Clyde strikers. Asquith last night in Manchester declared against a General Election.

I wrote to George, and to Gilbert, who has at last resigned his office in the Winnipeg Electric Railway Cy, and is going to British Columbia.

After lunch mine host carried me off to a Munitions Girls Club, which I opened formally with a speech. There was a room–full of helpers, girls, & wounded soldiers. The latter are one of the difficulties. Idle & convalescent, they turn to flirtation with unquenchable avidity, & they have brought back with them from France a strange moral deadness on the subject of sexual relations. The girls on their side are less reluctant than lewdly aggressive. Their new command of money has made them brazenly self–indulgent. Drunkenness is reported among them in the streets. Indeed many of them have a very dissipated look.

The "Times" publishes a very dreadful description from a German source of the Bolshevist terror in Russia. Everybody seems to face death manfully. "A well–known arch–priest, Vostorgoff, who was executed in common with them (i.e. the ex–Czar's ministers), though wounded found strength enough to lift up his hands and bless his executioners. The soldiers employed in these horrors are said to have "contracted the execution habit, executions having become necessary to them, just as morphia is to morphia maniacs. They volunteer for the service, & cannot sleep unless they have shot someone dead".

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