And it was after this that Winona became active as a promoter of bazaars for ravaged Belgium and a pacifist whose watchword was "Resist not evil!" She wrote again in her journal: "If only someone would reason calmly with them!" She presently became radiant with hope, for a whole boatload of earnest souls went over to reason calmly with the combatants.
But the light she had seen proved deceiving.

The earnest souls went forward, but for some cause, never fully revealed to Winona, they had been unable to reason calmly with those whose mad behaviour they had meant to correct.

It was said that they had been unable to reason calmly even among themselves.

It was merely a mark of Winona's earnestness that she felt things might have gone differently had the personnel of this valiant embassy been enlarged to include herself.

Meantime, war was becoming more and more the bad place, just as General Sherman had said.
She had little thought now for silk stockings or other abominations of the frivolous, for her own country seemed on the very verge of committing a frightful error.
Some time had elapsed since Wilbur Cowan definitely knew that he would never go to war because of the mother of Lyman Teaford's infant son.