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path: root/old/52451-h.htm.2021-01-24
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      Living Bayonets, by Coningsby Dawson
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Living Bayonets, by Coningsby Dawson

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Title: Living Bayonets
       A Record of The Last Push

Author: Coningsby Dawson

Release Date: June 30, 2016 [EBook #52451]
Last Updated: March 12, 2018

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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</pre>
    <div style="height: 8em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h1>
      LIVING BAYONETS
    </h1>
    <h3>
      A Record of The Last Push
    </h3>
    <h2>
      By Coningsby Dawson
    </h2>
    <h4>
      London: John Lane, The Bodley Head New York:
    </h4>
    <h3>
      1919
    </h3>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
    </h5>
    <blockquote>
      <p>
        <i>"Our spirits are living bayonets. The ideals which we carry in our
        hearts are more deadly to the enemy than any man-made weapons.</i>&rdquo;
      </p>
    </blockquote>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <p>
      <b>CONTENTS</b>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> LIVING BAYONETS </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE </a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      FOREWORD
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HESE selections
      from collected letters of Coningsby Dawson have been edited by his sister,
      Muriel Dawson, and are published in response to hundreds of requests.
      Readers of his first volume of correspondence from the Front, issued under
      the title of &ldquo;Khaki Courage,&rdquo; have written from all over the
      country asking that a further series be given them. The generous
      appreciation and personal interest expressed by these readers have induced
      Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson's family to publish these letters. They
      take up his story at the point where &ldquo;Khaki Courage&rdquo; laid it
      down, at the time when America entered the war.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      LIVING BAYONETS
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A RECORD OF THE LAST PUSH
    </h3>
    <h3>
      I
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 14, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE other night at
      twelve your letters came to me just as I was climbing into my bunk, so
      recently tenanted by a Hun. I immediately lit another candle, stuck it on
      the wall in a manner peculiar to myself, and started on a feast of genuine
      home gossip.
    </p>
    <p>
      What a difference it must make to you to know that the United States are
      at last confessedly our Ally. Their financial and industrial support will
      be invaluable to us and will make a difference at once. And the moral
      advantage of having them on our side is the greatest wound to the spirit
      of Germany that she has received since the war started. It will be real
      fun to be able to come back to New York in khaki, won't it?&mdash;instead
      of slinking in as a civilian. Besides, if I get wounded, I'll be
      able to come home to visit you on leave now.
    </p>
    <p>
      This big decision has made me almost gay ever since it happened. I have
      such a new affection for everything across the Atlantic&mdash;almost as if
      New York and the Hudson were just across the lawn from England, the
      nearest of near neighbours. I wish with all my heart that I could drop in
      on you for a day and just sit down on the sunny verandah and talk and
      talk. There's so much I want to hear and so much I want to
      understand in the changed attitude of America. I'm sure everyone
      must be much more happy now that the cloud of reproach has lifted and the
      brightness of heroism is in the air. It shines in my imagination like the
      clear blueness above the white towers of New York. There's one thing
      certain; now that the President has made up his mind, the country will go
      as baldheadedly for war as it has for everything else it ever set out to
      attain. The real momentousness of this happening hasn't been
      appreciated by the fighting men out here yet. With a sublime arrogance
      they feel themselves quite capable of licking Germany without the
      assistance of anyone.
    </p>
    <h3>
      II
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 17, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night I was
      out on a working party&mdash;a moonlight night with sleet falling, and did
      not get back till past two. The first thing my flash-light fell on as I
      entered my dug-out was a pile of letters from home. At past 3 a.m. I was
      still reading them, when H. and B. woke up and asked if there was anything
      for them. There was. So there we were all lying in our bunks and reading
      our love-letters till nearly 4 a.m.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yesterday I had a very exciting time. I was doing some reconnoitring along
      the front when a bullet whizzed by and almost scorched the ear of my
      sergeant. We hopped into a trench about two feet full of water. But
      whenever we showed ourselves the sniping started up again. At last we got
      tired of wading, so climbed out and made a dash across the open. None of
      us was caught, but by pure bad luck another sergeant of mine, who was
      waiting quite 300 yards away, got it in the back. He was a big, heavy
      chap, and we had quite a slippery time carrying him out on a stretcher to
      the dressing-station. That's the second N.C.O. who's been hit
      with me in the last ten days. The other chap got it in his side.
    </p>
    <p>
      Either of these wounds would have been nice to get for anyone who wanted a
      rest. But I don't want to get out yet; all the really sporting part
      of this war will be this summer. We are praying that we may come into
      action at the gallop, &ldquo;Halt, action front!&rdquo; bang off our
      rounds and follow up again.
    </p>
    <p>
      For some reason, to-day my memory has been full of pictures of that
      wonderful leave we had together in London. Things have come back that I'd
      forgotten&mdash;visits to theatres, to restaurants, rides in taxis, so
      many things&mdash;all the time there's that extraordinary atmosphere
      of intense love. I suppose I must have spent the night dreaming of you.
      Living in the daylight hours in this deep dug-out makes spring seem like
      winter; I expect that helps me to remember. How I wish I could have those
      ten days again. Perhaps our next will be in New York, when I come back in
      khaki for an odd week. The thought of such a happening in the future and
      the recollection of the meeting that is past are like coming to a fire out
      of a dark, cold night. This war is so monstrously impersonal; the
      attachments one forms with those among whom he lives are so few, that the
      passionately personal affections of the old days shine out like beacon
      fires. It will be wonderful when the war ends and one can sit still in a
      great hush.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yesterday I had a day off for a bath behind the lines&mdash;I hadn't
      tubbed for well over a month and hadn't been back of the guns; also
      I had slept in my clothes&mdash;so you may judge that warm water and soap
      were a necessity. Afterwards I had great fun shopping for the mess, but I
      didn't manage to buy much, as the country is all eaten up. All that
      is beautiful in the way of landscape lies ahead, so we're very
      anxious to capture it from the Hun. One looks out over his back country,
      so green and beautiful and untouched, and feels like an Old Testament spy
      having a peep at the Promised Land. Without doubt it will be ours in the
      ordained time. When I went out this morning it was to see a blue, blue
      sky, a battery pulling into action and behind it a desolated town. But the
      feature that caught my attention was the spring sky. I stared and stared
      at it and thought of when the war is ended. To-day I had to go to another
      town which is in process of being battered. On my way back I passed
      through a wood&mdash;most of the trees were levelled to the ground. In the
      wood I found a hawk wounded by shrapnel, and pressing close behind a
      fallen trunk. And I found my first spring flower&mdash;a daffodil&mdash;which
      I am enclosing to you. I've sent you many flowers, but none which
      carries with it more love than this little withered daffodil&mdash;my
      first token of spring&mdash;gathered from a fought-over woodland of
      France.
    </p>
    <p>
      Since writing thus far it has been raining cats and dogs, and I've
      been catching the mud, which leaks through my roof, in a soup-plate.
      Little things like mud and rain don't damp our ardour, however; we
      press on and on to certain victory.
    </p>
    <p>
      One of our officers came back from leave to-day&mdash;he'd spent his
      freedom in Devon, and was full of the beauty of the spring-time there.
      Happy Devon! War has changed the seasons in France. Winter started in
      October; it's the middle of April and winter has not yet ended. Oh,
      to wake up again with the splendid assurance of a summer day with nothing
      but beauty&mdash;such a peaceful day as we have so often spent at
      Kootenay. That wounded hawk, crouching among the daffodils, is a symbol&mdash;we're
      like that: beasts of prey for our country's sake, maimed in mind and
      spirit, and waiting till our wings grow strong again. And yet&mdash;who
      would be anywhere else but here so long as the war lasts? Oh, the fine
      clean courage of the men in the face of danger and their brave endurance
      in the presence of privation! It passes understanding. I saw a chap with a
      mortal wound the other day thinking nothing of himself&mdash;only of his
      pal, who was but slightly wounded. The most unendurable people act like
      heroes in the face of death. There's a fundamental nobility in all
      men which comes to the surface when life is most despairing.
    </p>
    <h3>
      III
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 19, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> sit in a hole in
      a recent battlefield. Over my head is some tattered canvas, upheld by
      Fritzie shovels. In a battered bucket wood splutters, and the rain it
      raineth every day. To make my appearance more gipsy-like I may add that my
      hands are cracked with the mud. When the war is ended I shall lie in bed
      for a month.
    </p>
    <p>
      We've come through some very lively times of late, and I shall have
      plenty of local colour to impart to you when the war is ended. My mind is
      packed with vivid pictures which I cannot tell. This huge silence which
      rests between individuals is the most terrific thing about the war. You
      get the terror made concrete for you when you creep to your Observation
      Post and spy upon the Hun country. In the foreground is a long stretch of
      barbed wire, shell-holes and mud. Behind that a ruined town; then
      gradually, greenness growing more vivid as it recedes to the horizon.
      Nothing stirs. You may look through your telescope all day, but nothing
      stirs.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yet you know that in every hole the hidden death lurks; should you for a
      moment forget and raise your head unwarily, you are reminded of your folly
      by the crack of a rifle. I've always made the mistake of believing
      the best of everyone&mdash;and, as a soldier, I've never been able
      to credit the fact that anyone of a big nation would count himself happy
      to get my scalp. The actual passes belief. I recall so vividly that story
      of the final war, written by a German, <i>The Human Slaughter-house</i>.
      The chap never realizes the awfulness of his job until for the first time
      he comes face to face with the young boy he's called upon to kill.
      We kill by hundreds from a distance, but the destroyed and the destroyers
      rarely have a hint of each other's identity. I came to a dug-out the
      other day in a battered trench. Even the water in the shell-holes was dyed
      by explosives to the colour of blood. Outside lay a German, face downwards
      in the mud&mdash;an old man with grizzled hair. I shoved my revolver round
      the mouth of the dug-out and called to anyone who was there to come out. A
      Cockney voice answered; then followed a scrambling; two huge feet came up
      through the dark; they belonged to a dead German; two of his comrades
      grinned cheerfully at me from behind the corpse and propelled it none too
      reverently into the mud. Behind the party I discovered my
      Cockney-adventurer&mdash;a machine-gunner who, having lost his company,
      made amends by capturing three Fritzes and killing two others with the aid
      of a pal with a shattered leg. I told him to bring his pal up. Under his
      directions the Fritzes trotted back into the hole and brought out the
      wounded fellow. They were extraordinarily meek-looking and quite
      surprisingly gentle; when I'd told them where the dressing-station
      was, they made a bandy-chair of their hands, placed our fellow's
      arms about their necks and staggered away through the barrage&mdash;or
      curtain of fire, as the papers like to call it&mdash;back to safety with
      their wounded enemy. And yet within the hour all these people had been
      chucking bombs at one another.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days ago I was detailed for a novel experience&mdash;to follow up
      the infantry attack across No Man's Land to the Hun Front line and
      as far as his support trenches. I called for volunteers to accompany me
      and had a splendid lot of chaps. My party got away with the adventure
      without a scratch&mdash;which was extraordinarily lucky. Moreover, we
      accomplished the particular job that we were called upon to do.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-night I'm out from dusk to daylight poking through the darkness
      in a country where one dare not use a flash-light. Between two ruined
      towns I have to pass a battered Calvary.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Christ upon His Cross is still untouched, though the shrine and
      surrounding trees are smashed to atoms. I think He means more to me like
      that&mdash;stripped of His gorgeousness&mdash;than ever. He seems so like
      ourselves in His lonely and unhallowed suffering. The road which leads to
      and from Him is symbolic&mdash;shell-torn, scattered with dead horses and
      men, while ahead the snarl of shrapnel darts across the sky and spends
      itself in little fleecy puffs. All this desolation will be re-created one
      day, the country will grow green and, in another country, greener than any
      upon earth, those dead men will walk and laugh&mdash;and in that other
      country the Christ will no longer hang alone and aloofly. I like to think
      of that&mdash;of the beauty in the future, if not in this, then in some
      other world. One grows tired, just like that image on the Cross. How
      little the body counts! War teaches us that.
    </p>
    <h3>
      IV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 22, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> had a letter from
      each one of you the day before last, and they reached me within three
      weeks of being written&mdash;it made you all seem very near.
    </p>
    <p>
      I am writing this to you from a mercifully deep dug-out, which was the
      home of Huns considerably less than a fortnight ago. I'm sure it was
      very obliging of them to think ahead and provide us with such safe
      hiding-places from their villainous shells. They have knocked the house
      down overhead. In the yard is a broken bird-cage&mdash;the owner must have
      set the captive free before he made good his own escape. Hanging at the
      head of my bunk is an iron crucifix and on the wall is a beautiful woman's
      portrait. One hardly thinks of his enemy as being human these days&mdash;he
      seems only an impersonal devastating force; but it was a man with
      affections who lately tenanted my dug-out.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a recent attack I saw a curious happening. I was up with the infantry
      as liaison officer when one of our planes was shot down. The pilot made an
      effort to land behind our trenches, but his machine was unmanageable and
      he came down in Boche territory&mdash;or what had been Boche territory a
      quarter of an hour before. Through my glasses I saw the pilot and observer
      get out and start to creep cautiously back. We ourselves didn't know
      for certain where the Huns were&mdash;all we knew was that they were
      supposed to be withdrawing. When the airmen arrived at our battalion
      headquarters they were still scarcely convinced that our chaps were not
      Huns in khaki. When we gave them a meal of bully-beef they knew that wc
      were British. So very much I could tell you which is thrilling and heroic
      if only I were allowed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Do you know, sometimes I marvel at my contented loneliness? It isn't
      like me. I ought to be homesick and&mdash;but I'm not. I'm too
      much consumed with the frenzy of an ideal to care for anything but to see
      the principle for which we fight established. What one man can do isn't
      much&mdash;only a Jesus can save the world singlehanded; the real
      satisfaction is in one's own soul, that softness and success had not
      made him deaf to the voice of duty when she called to him. For me this
      undertaking is as holy as a crusade; if it were not I could not endure the
      sights. As it is I keep quiet in my soul, feeling humbly glad that I am
      allowed to fulfil the dreams of my boyhood. I always wanted to do
      something to save the world, you remember. First I was going to be a
      missionary; then a reformer; then a preacher; then a poet. Instead of any
      of these I &ldquo;struck luck&rdquo; as a novelist&mdash;and I can see now
      how success was corroding to one's ideals. Success in America is so
      inevitably measured in terms of praise and money. I wanted to save the
      world; never in my wildest dreams did it occur to me that I should get my
      chance as a soldier. I remember when I was studying history at Oxford how
      I used to shudder at the descriptions of battles, especially mediaeval
      battles waged by mailed Titans. I don't know what change has taken
      place in me; this is a more damnable war in its possibilities for
      suffering than any of a bygone age; in comparison, those old wars seem
      chivalrous and humane. And yet because of the spiritual goal for which we
      fight I no longer shudder. Yes, that is the reason for the change. A man
      doesn't often get the chance in these commercial times to risk all
      that he holds most dear for humanity's sake. I think of the morning
      family prayers of childhood in the old panelled room in Highbury and the
      petitions you used to make for us&mdash;everything has shaped towards this
      great moment in our lives; the past was a straight road leading to this
      crisis. I don't forget the share you three contribute&mdash;the
      share of your brave loneliness and waiting. Your share is the greatest.
      God bless you.
    </p>
    <p>
      Our major was twice wounded in the recent offensives and has now left us
      for a higher position. I was terribly sorry to lose him.
    </p>
    <h3>
      V
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 30,1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he mud has gone.
      Spring is here and the sun shines all the time. Oh, a most enjoyable war,
      I do assure you. When I wakened this morning I wandered up the thirty
      stairs from my dug-out into the former garden, which is now a scene of the
      utmost desolation. A row was going on as though the Celestial housemaid
      had lost her temper and given notice, and was tumbling all the plates from
      the pantry through the clouds. Above the clatter I heard a sound which was
      almost alarming: the clear, brave note of a thrush, piping, piping,
      piping. He didn't seem to care a rap how often the guns blew their
      noses or how often the Hun shrapnel clashed like cymbals overhead; he had
      his song to sing in the sunshine, and was determined to sing it, no matter
      that the song might go unheard. So there I stood and listened to him among
      the ruins, as one might listen to a faithful priest in a fallen church. I
      re-created in imagination the people who had lived here for generations,
      their tragedies, kindnesses, love-affairs. It must have been a beautiful
      place once, for everywhere there are stumps of fruit-trees, hedges of box
      trodden almost underground, circular patches which were flower-beds. I can
      picture the exiles' joy when they hear that their village has been
      recaptured. Presently they'll come back, these old women and men&mdash;for
      their sons are fighting&mdash;and they'll look in vain for even the
      landmarks of the little house which once sheltered their affections. The
      thrush in the tree is all that the Huns have left of past history. We
      British lose our men in the fight, but the sacrifice of the French is
      immeasurable, for when their sons are dead they have no quiet place of
      recollections. They can't say, &ldquo;Do you remember how he walked
      here two years back?&rdquo; or &ldquo;These hollyhocks he planted,&rdquo;
      or &ldquo;How he waved us goodbye as we watched him from the gate!&rdquo;
      The same cyclone of passion which has taken their sons' fives, has
      robbed them of everything tangible which would remind them of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      As regards the U.S.A. joining with us, I have spoken with several Huns.
      They one and all seem very dejected about it, and seem to consider the
      loss of America's friendship one of the greatest blows of the war.
    </p>
    <h3>
      VI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 10, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's just
      back at the guns from a two days' rest at the wagon-fines. It's
      the first time I've been back since March. I rose early on a blazing
      morning and started down to the point where I was to meet my horses. I say
      &ldquo;rose early,&rdquo; but as a matter of fact I had only had four
      hours' sleep in forty-eight, and hadn't had my clothes off for
      nearly three weeks. As I drew away, the low thunder that we make grew less
      and less, the indescribable smell of bursting explosives fainter; soon I
      realized that a lark was singing overhead; then another&mdash;then
      another. Brave little birds to come so near to danger to sing for us. At
      the edge of a wood I found my chestnut mare, Kitty, and my groom&mdash;the
      chap who used to work at the Silver King mine, which overlooks our ranch
      at Kootenay. That we should share that memory always forms a bond of
      kindness between us. We didn't stop long at the wagon-line, but soon
      started out to get farther back for lunch. I had it in the shack of an
      officer who was with me at Petewawa. Then off I went at a gallop for green
      trees and clean country. I hadn't gone far before I came to a God's
      Acre full of crowded little white crosses and newly turned earth. Our
      captain was with me, and he learnt that an old friend from one of our
      batteries was on the way down with a Union Jack spread over him. We went
      into the brown field where the men who have &ldquo;gone west&rdquo; lie so
      closely and snugly side by side, and came to a place where six shallow
      holes were dug like clay coffins. Presently, winding through the forest of
      crosses, the hard blue sky overhead, we saw the little band advancing, the
      stretcher carried high on the shoulders of four officers. The burden was
      set down and the flag lifted, showing the mummy-like form sewn up in the
      blanket in which the living man had slept. The chaplain began tremulously,
      &ldquo;I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me,&rdquo;
      etc., and while he recited I watched the faces of the gunners drawn up at
      attention in the strong sunlight. To them, whatever else the ceremony
      meant, it at least meant this&mdash;a day away from the guns. Suddenly I
      discovered that the Lord's Prayer was being said. Then heads were
      again covered and the word of command was given. &ldquo;Right turn. Quick
      march.&rdquo; The stretcher was gathered up and the little crowd
      dispersed. I suppose there is a woman somewhere who would have given ten'
      years of life to have stood in my shoes beside that narrow grave. For
      myself I thought, &ldquo;Well, the chap's got what we long for most
      out here&mdash;rest. He won't have to stand in the mud any more,
      when his feet are like stones and eyes like lead, watching and watching
      the rockets go up along the front. And he won't have to guide his
      guns in at night, or wonder what life will do to him when the war is
      ended. He longed for sleep and now he sleeps endlessly.&rdquo; It didn't
      impress me as at all sad. He'd played his part like a man and was at
      last rewarded. But we&mdash;we were alive, and we hadn't had a bath
      for a month&mdash;so we jumped on our horses and trotted off to the
      nearest shower.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was five in the afternoon when we again took to the highway. We wanted
      to sponge out our minds by looking at something beautiful, just as we had
      sponged down our bodies. We, I should explain, were myself and the captain
      of my battery. Soon we found ourselves among fields from which all the
      wrinkles of trenches and pit-marks of shell-holes had been smoothed out.
      There was a river winding between tall trees unblasted by the curtain of
      fire. Peasants were at work on their little patches&mdash;women and either
      very old men or boys. We came to a town as quiet and unspoiled as those we
      used to visit in pre-war days. In a courtyard we tethered our horses and
      then sat down to one of those incomparable French meals. It was splendid
      after canned stuff, and you couldn't hear the boom of a single gun.
      The peace of the place got hold of us&mdash;we didn't want to go
      back too hurriedly, and kept postponing and postponing. A blue and gold
      haze with a touch of silver shining through it was blurring all the sky,
      when we remounted. We travelled slowly, singing&mdash;thinking up the
      twilight songs of other times. My thoughts went back to Scotch holidays at
      Arran and Loch Katrine&mdash;the daringly late evenings of childhood.
      Reluctantly we came back and saw the frantic city of Very lights grow up,
      which indicate the Hun front. The air began to be shaken again by the
      prolonged agony of rushing shells and stamping guns. It was only after
      midnight, when we had reached our hut, that I remembered the need of
      sleep. But when I struck a match on entering, I found letters from each
      one of you awaiting&mdash;so lay late in bed reading them by candlelight
      for another hour. One snatches at small pleasures and magnifies them into
      intensity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Your letters told me about <i>Khaki Courage</i>, and seeing &ldquo;Colonel
      Newcome,&rdquo; and about the Highlanders in New York. What a very much
      more homely place America must be to you now. I must say I am keen to see
      the book. It's not mine at all&mdash;it's you dear home people's&mdash;you
      called it out and you put it together.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here I sit in the underground place which I have to call &ldquo;home&rdquo;
      at present. You go through all kinds of contortions to enter. Stephen
      Leacock could be very funny at my expense.
    </p>
    <h3>
      VII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 2, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is 11 a.m., and
      I'm sitting at the bottom of a dug-out waiting for the Hun to finish
      his morning hate before I go upstairs. He seems very angry, and has just
      caved in one of our walls.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mother seemed most awfully sorry for me in her last letter. But you know I'm
      really having rather a good time, despite having a minimum amount of
      washing and having our mess kitchen blown in every few days. The only time
      that one gets melancholy is when nothing is doing. An attack or the
      preparations for an attack are real fun. Everybody is on his toes, and
      there's no time to think.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's four hours later. Just as I had reached this point news came
      that some of our chaps were buried, so I had a little brisk spade-work,
      then a wriggling voyage through a hole, and then a lot of messy work
      pouring iodine into wounds and binding up. I'm afraid my hands are
      still rather like a murderer's. Incidentally our kitchen is entirely
      done for this time. We've got the wounded fellows on their way to
      Blighty, and are fairly confident that they're not going west this
      time.
    </p>
    <p>
      I am so glad that the coming of America into the game has made so much
      difference to you. I wish I could come back for a fortnight and share the
      excitement with you. It's difficult to picture New York as a
      military pageant in khaki. Tell me all about the young fellows I know and
      what they are doing. I wonder how many are in the Field Artillery&mdash;which
      is about the most interesting part of the game.
    </p>
    <p>
      You remember that Calvary I told you about. I saw it under another guise
      after writing. Something happened and, instead of the spring peace, it was
      a shamble with horses and men dying. In such cases one can't do
      anything&mdash;he has to go on about his own errand.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm so very dirty that I'll leave off now while there's
      a chance to have a wash. I'm awfully muddy, and my hair is just
      ready for growing potatoes&mdash;there's about a pound of the real
      estate of France in it.
    </p>
    <h3>
      VIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 6,1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou certainly are
      owed a whole lot of letters, but it is very difficult to find the time
      under present conditions&mdash;I didn't get my breakfast until 7.30
      p.m. yesterday. And to-day I was up at 4 a.m., and didn't come back
      from up front till dusk. So you see I really have some excuse for being
      temporarily a bad correspondent. You don't need to be sorry for me,
      though, or anything like that, for I'm having quite a good time.
      After the mud this hard white sunlight is a godsend. Do you remember&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>June</i> 7.&mdash;Thus far I got when I was interrupted, and another
      day has gone by. I'm just back again from up front. I went there at
      dawn to do some reconnaissance work. By eight the heat was sweltering&mdash;just
      the way it was when we made our memorable trip down the Loire valley&mdash;only
      now there are no estaminets at which to drink Ciro Citron. The only
      inhabitants of the place where I am now are the mayor and his daughter,
      who returned the moment the town was captured. Rather fine of them.
      Yesterday a French soldier looked in (on special leave) to claim what was
      left of his cottage; just as much, I should imagine, as you could make
      into a road. And yet, despite the fallen houses, the fruit-trees are green
      and not so long ago were white with bloom and nodding.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm feeling extraordinarily lazy and comfortable. I've taken
      two hours over shaving and washing. My basin was the brass case of a big
      eight-inch naval shell which was formerly the property of the Hun. I wish
      I could send you one back. Two mornings ago I had a dive and swim in a
      shell-hole filled with rain-water, which gives you some idea of the sized
      crater a big shell can make. From henceforth, however, I shall have to
      eschew this pleasure, as I understand that the ground is so poisoned with
      corpses, etc., that the water is likely to bring on skin disease. I have
      that to a slight extent already. Most of us have&mdash;it comes from
      eating no vegetables and nothing but tinned stuff.
    </p>
    <p>
      How interested you'd be if you could just go for a couple of hours'
      walk with me. Coming back to-day I marvelled that we had ever managed to
      make our advance; the Hun machine-gun emplacements were so strongly
      fortified and well chosen. It speaks volumes for the impetuosity of our
      infantry.
    </p>
    <h3>
      IX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 17, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> believe it must
      be nearly a week since I wrote. The reason is that I'm down at the
      wagon-lines, supposed to be resting, which is when we work the hardest.
      First of all, we had a grand inspection of the Brigade, which kept one
      going from 5 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., cleaning harness. Then we had Brigade
      sports, which are not yet over, and which don't leave an officer
      with any leisure. The best time for letter-writing is when one is in
      action, since you sit in a dug-out for interminable hours with nothing
      much to keep you busy.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm looking forward very much to the receipt of <i>Khaki Courage</i>;
      it hasn't come yet. It will be like reading something absolutely
      beyond my knowledge.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is now evening. This has been a mixed day. I've been orderly
      officer. This morning I heard Canon Scott preach&mdash;he was the father I
      wrote to you about whom I met going up front in the winter to look for the
      body of his son. He's a fine old chap, and fully believes that he's
      fated to leave his bones in France. This afternoon was spent in
      harness-cleaning and this evening in watching a Brigade display of boxing.
      A strange world! But you'll judge that we're having quite good
      times. Last night we had an open-air concert&mdash;&ldquo;Silver Threads
      among the Gold,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Long, Long Trail,&rdquo; etc. Trenches
      lay behind us and ahead of us&mdash;not so long ago Huns could have
      reached us with a revolver shot, where we were all sitting. Overhead, like
      rooks through the twilight, our fighting planes sailed home to bed. Far
      away on the horizon, observers in the Hun balloons must have been watching
      us. It was almost possible to forget that a war existed; almost, until'
      a reminder came with a roar and column of black smoke to a distant flank.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Monday.</i>
    </p>
    <p>
      This letter gets scribbled in pieces. I'm now waiting for the
      afternoon parade to fall in. The gramophone is strumming out a banjo song,
      and in my galvanized hut it's as hot as&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;. Most
      of the men strip off everything but their breeches and go about their
      horses dripping like stokers. The place isn't so unlike Petewawa in
      some respects, except that there is no water. You look for miles across a
      landscape of sage-green and chalk, with straight French roads running
      without a waver from sky-line to sky-line. There's nothing habitable
      in sight&mdash;only grey piles and splintered trees. But in spite of the
      wholesale destruction one finds beauty. You'd smile if you could see
      our camp&mdash;it looks like a collection of gipsy bivouacs made of
      lean-tos of wood with canvas and sand-bags for roofs. The rats are getting
      bold, and coming out of the trenches&mdash;rather a nuisance. It's
      strange to be here playing football on the very ground over which not so
      long ago I followed the infantry within half an hour of the commencement
      of the attack. Our wounded chaps were crawling back, trying to drag
      themselves out of the Hun barrage, which was ploughing up the ground all
      around, and the Huns were lying like piled-up wheatsacks in their battered
      front line. One learns to have a very short memory and to be glad of the
      present.
    </p>
    <p>
      Within sight a little trench tramway runs just like the Welsh toy-railway
      of our childhood. It leads all the way to Blighty and New York and
      Kootenay. One can see the wounded coming out on it, and sometimes sees
      them with a little envy.
    </p>
    <h3>
      X
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 23,1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night <i>Khaki
      Courage</i> arrived. I found the Officers' Mess assembled round my
      mail&mdash;they'd guessed what was in the package. I had intended
      smuggling the book away, and did actually succeed in getting it into my
      trench-coat pocket. A free fight ensued and, since there were four against
      one, I was soon conquered. Then one of them, having taken possession of
      the little volume, danced about our tin tabernacle reading extracts. I had
      planned to ride into a neighbouring city for dinner that night, but sat
      reading till nearly twelve. I can't thank you all enough for your
      loving work. I think the proof of how well you have done it is, that my
      brother officers are quite uncynically keen about it. If they, who have
      shared the atmosphere which I have unconsciously set down in its pages,
      can read with eagerness and without ridicule, I think the book, as
      compiled by you, dear people, should stand the test.
    </p>
    <p>
      Do you remember a description I gave you some months back of seeing Huns
      brought up from a captured dug-out? That's long enough ago now for
      me to be able to give you a few details. A fortnight before the show
      commenced it was planned that an officer from each battery with a party of
      volunteers should follow up the infantry attack and build a road through
      the Hun Front line over which our artillery should advance. The initial
      work was carried on at night, and the road was built right up to our own
      front-line. On the morning of the attack I took my volunteers forward and
      hid with the rest of the party in one of our support trenches. We judged
      that we should escape the Hun barrage there, and should have advanced
      before his retaliation on our back country commenced. Soon after midnight,
      on a cold morning when the sleet was falling, we set out. The sky was
      faintly tinged with a grey dawn when our offensive opened. Suddenly the
      intense and almost spiritual quiet was changed into frantic chaos. The sky
      was vividly lit with every kind of ingeniously contrived destruction. In
      addition to his other shells, the Hun flung back gas and liquid fire. It
      looked as though no infantry could live in it. Within an hour of the
      offensive starting, each officer crept out of his trench and went forward
      to reconnoitre the ground, taking with him one N.C.O. and a runner. My
      runner carried with him a lot of stakes with white rags attached for
      marking out our route. We wound our way carefully through the shells until
      we reached our own Front line. Here the Hun barrage was falling briskly,
      and gas-shells were coming over to beat the band. The bursting of
      explosives was for all the world like corn popping in a pan. We ran across
      what had been No Man's Land and entered the Hun wire. My job was to
      build from here to his support-trenches. His frontline trench was piled
      high with dead. The whole spectacle was unreal as something that had been
      staged; the corpses looked like wax-works. One didn't have time to
      observe much, for flames seemed to be going off beneath one's feet
      almost every second, and it seemed marvellous that we contrived to live
      where there was so much death. As we went farther back we began to find
      our own khaki-clad dead. I don't think the Huns had got them; it was
      our own barrage, which they had followed too quickly in the eagerness of
      the attack. Then we came to where the liquid fire had descended, for the
      poor fellows had thrown themselves into the pools in the shell-holes and
      only the faces and arms were sticking out. Then I recognised the
      support-trench, which was the end of my journey, and planted my Union Jack
      as a signal for the other officers who were to build ahead of me. With my
      runner and N.C.O. I started to reconnoitre my road back, planting my
      stakes to mark the route. When I was again at what had been our Front
      line, I sent my runner back to guide in my volunteers. What a day it was!
      For a good part of the time the men had to dig, wearing their gas-helmets.
      You never saw such a mess&mdash;sleet driving in our faces, the ground
      hissing and boiling as shells descended, dead men everywhere, the wounded
      crawling desperately, dragging themselves to safety. I saw sights of pity
      and bravery that it is best not to mention, and all the time my brave
      chaps dug on, making the road for the guns. Soon through the smoke
      grey-clad figures came in tottering droves, scorched, battered, absolutely
      stunned. They looked more like beasts in their pathetic dumbness. One
      hardly recognized them as enemies. All day we worked, not stopping to eat,
      and by the evening we saw the first of our guns advancing. It's a
      great game, this war, and searches the soul out. That night I slept in the
      mud, clothes and all, the dreamless sleep of the dog-tired.
    </p>
    <p>
      Note.&mdash;<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded in the right arm at
      Vimy on 26th June. He was evacuated with a serious case of gas-gangrene,
      and after being in, first, a Casualty Clearing Hospital and then a Base
      Hospital, was sent back to England on 8th July, where he was in a hospital
      at Wandsworth, London, till the end of August. His arm was in such a
      serious condition that at first it was thought necessary to amputate it.
      Fortunately after days of ceaseless care this was avoided.</i>
    </p>
    <h3>
      XI
    </h3>
    <p>
      Hospital
    </p>
    <p>
      London <i>July</i> 8, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> fortnight ago
      to-day I got wounded. The place was stitched up and didn't look bad
      enough to go out with. Three days later there was an attack and I was to
      be observer. My arm got poisoned while I was on the job, and when I came
      back I was sent out. Blood-poisoning started, and they had to operate
      three times; for a little while there was a talk of amputation. But you're
      not to worry at all about me now, for I'm getting on splendidly and
      there's no cause for anxiety. They tell me it will take about two
      months before I get the full use of my arm back. Reggie was in London on
      leave and got his leave extended&mdash;I missed him by an hour. J. L. was
      round to see me this morning and is cabling to you. I don't think
      you ought to cross while the risk is so great and there's a
      difficulty in obtaining passports&mdash;though you know how I'd love
      to have you.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've missed all my letters for the past fortnight. Please excuse me,
      for my arm gets very tired, and I'm not supposed to use it.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London July 25, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m going on
      all right, but can't use my arm much for writing just at present, so
      you won't mind short letters, will you? I got the first written by
      you since I was hurt, yesterday. I am so glad that America is so
      patriotic.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yesterday, to my great surprise, I was called up by the High Commissioner
      of Canada, and on going to see him found he wanted me to start at once on
      preparing an important government statement. Since I'm forbidden to
      use my arm for writing, I'm to have a stenographer and dictate my
      stuff after doing the interviewing. This job is only temporary. And I
      think it is possible after I have finished it, if they refuse to allow me
      to return to the Front at once, that I may get a leave to America. I
      wouldn't want to get a long one, as I am so anxious to get back to
      France.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't worry at all about me. I feel quite well now, and go about
      with my arm in a sling and am allowed out of hospital to do this work all
      day. As soon as my ann grows stronger I'll write you a good long
      letter, but while it is as it is at present I have to restrict myself to
      bare essentials.
    </p>
    <p>
      Oh, did I tell you? I wouldn't have missed coming through London on
      a stretcher for pounds. The flower-girls climbed into the ambulance and
      showered us with roses. All the way as we passed people waved and shouted.
      It was a kind of royal procession, and, like a baby, I cried.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>August</i> 3,1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
      come back to my office in Oxford Circus from lunching at the Rendezvous.
      Next to my table during lunch were two typical Wardour Street dealers,
      rubbing their hands and chortling over a cheap buy.
    </p>
    <p>
      I wonder how long this different way of life is going to last. Someone
      will snap his fingers and heigh-ho, presto! I shall be back in France.
      This little taste of the old life gives me a very vivid idea of the sheer
      glee with which I shall greet the end of the war. How jolly comfortable it
      will be to be your own master&mdash;not that one ever is his own master
      while there are other people to live for. But I mean, what an
      extraordinary miracle it will seem to be allowed to reckon one's
      life in years and not in weeks&mdash;to be able to look forward and plan
      and build. And yet&mdash;this is a confession&mdash;I can see myself
      getting up from my easy-chair and going out again quite gladly directly
      there is another war, if my help is needed. There was a time, long ago,
      when I used to regard a soldier with horror, and wondered how decent folk
      could admire him; the red of his coat always seemed to me the blood-red of
      murder. But it isn't the killing that counts&mdash;you find that out
      when you've become a soldier; it's the power to endure and
      walk bravely, and the opportunity for dying in a noble way. One doesn't
      hate his enemy if he's a good soldier, and doesn't even want
      to kill him from any personal motive&mdash;he may even regret killing him
      while in the act. I think it's just this attitude that makes our
      Canadians so terrible&mdash;they kill from principle and not from malice.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm seeing all my old friends again, lunching with one and dining
      with another, and have been to some matinees. But I can go to no evening
      performances, because I have to be in the hospital at 10 p.m.
    </p>
    <p>
      I really am hoping to get a week in New York after this piece of work is
      done, after which back to France till the war is ended.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>August</i> 30, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
      left hospital and am staying at this hotel. You keep saying in your
      letters that you never heard how I got my injury. I described it&mdash;but
      that letter must have gone astray. On 26th June I was wounded not by a
      shell, but by a piece of an iron chimney which was knocked down on to my
      right arm. I had it sewn up and for two days it was all right. The third I
      went up for an attack and it started to swell&mdash;by the time I came
      back I had gas-gangrene. The arm is better now and I'm on sick
      leave, though still working. They've made me an offer of a job here
      in London, but I should break my heart if I could not go back to the
      Front. But I think when I've finished here that I may get a special
      leave, with permission to call in at New York. Wouldn't that be
      grand?
    </p>
    <p>
      I don't want to raise your hopes too high, but it seems extremely
      likely that I shall see you shortly. I was to-day before my medical board,
      and they gave me two months' home service. I have been promised that
      as soon as a new Canadian ruling on home leave is confirmed, my
      application for leave will go through.
    </p>
    <p>
      If that happens, I shall cable you at once that I am coming. It doesn't
      seem at all possible or true that this can be so, and I'm making
      myself no promises till I'm really on the boat. It would be better
      that you should not, also. I'm taking a gamble and am going to order
      a new tunic for the occasion this afternoon.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's a golden afternoon outside&mdash;the kind that turns the leaves
      red at Kootenay, with the tang of iced wine in the air. The sound of
      London is like the tumming of a thousand banjos. It's good to be
      alive, and very wonderful after all that has happened.
    </p>
    <p>
      Note.&mdash;<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson arrived at Quebec on 26th
      September and came home on the following day. He was at home for a month.
      During that time he spoke in public on several occasions, and wrote the
      book which was brought out the following spring, entitled &ldquo;The Glory
      of the Trenches</i>.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <h3>
      XIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      Somewhere on the Atlantic <i>November</i> 11, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's the
      first letter since I left New York, coming to you. It's seven in the
      morning; I'm lying in my bunk, expecting any minute to be called to
      my bath.
    </p>
    <p>
      So far it's been a pleasant voyage, with rolling seas and no
      submarines. There are scarcely a hundred passengers, of whom only four are
      ladies, in the first class. The men are Government officials, Army and
      Navy officers going on Cook's Tours, and Naval attachés. The
      American naval men are an especially fine type. We do all the usual things&mdash;play
      cards, deck-golf and sleep immoderately, but always at the wrong times.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm going back for the second time, and going back in the most
      placid frame of mind. I compare this trip with my first trip over as a
      soldier. I was awfully anxious then, and kept saying good-bye to things
      for the last time. Now I live day by day in a manner which is so
      take-it-for-granted as to be almost commonplace. I've locked my
      imagination away in some garret of my mind and the house of my thoughts is
      very quiet.
    </p>
    <p>
      What bricks you all were in the parting&mdash;there wasn't any
      whining&mdash;you were a real soldier's family, and I felt proud of
      you. It was just a kind of &ldquo;Good luck, old chap&rdquo;&mdash;with
      all the rest of the speaking left to the eyes and hands. That's the
      way it should be in a world that's so full of surprises.
    </p>
    <p>
      This trip has done a tremendous lot for me&mdash;I shall always know now
      that the trenches are not the whole of the horizon. Before, when I landed
      in France, it seemed as though a sound-and sight-proof curtain had dropped
      behind and everything I had known and loved was at an end. One collects a
      little bit of shrapnel and, heigho, presto! one's home again. On my
      second trip, the war won't seem such a world without end.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-night I have to pack&mdash;that's wonderful, too. I'm
      wondering whether Reggie will be on the station. I shall send a telegram
      to warn him.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      The Ritz Hotel, London <i>November</i> 11, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his was the date
      at which I had to report back at Headquarters. Actually I reported back
      yesterday, because to-day is Sunday. I found that I had been detailed not
      for France, but for work under the High Commissioner. You know what such
      news means to me. I at once did my best to fight the order, but was told
      that it was a military order in which I had no choice. I start work
      to-morrow at Oxford Circus House, but shall put in an urgent request to go
      to France.-I shall at least try to get some limitations to the period of
      my stay in England. Even when I was in hospital I used to feel that the
      last stretcher-case out of the fighting was someone to be worshipped&mdash;he
      was nearer to the sacrifice than I. And now I'm not to go back for
      months, perhaps&mdash;I shall eat my heart out in England.
    </p>
    <p>
      Reggie fell asleep and has just wakened. He was dreaming, he said, the
      best dream in the world. It was that he might land back in New York on
      20th December and spend Christmas with you&mdash;then go up to Kootenay to
      get a glimpse of his little green home among the snow and apple trees and&mdash;&mdash;
      &ldquo;And then what?&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      I asked. He made a wry face. &ldquo;Go back to hunting submarines,&rdquo;
      he said quickly. <i>Go back!</i> We all want to go back. Why? Because it's
      so easy to find reasons for not going back probably. I shall raise heaven
      and earth to be sent back&mdash;and you'll be glad of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      There's something that I shouldn't tell you were I going back
      to-morrow. Last week I met one of my gunners on leave. He was standing on
      the island in Piccadilly Circus. I learnt from him that every officer who
      was with me at the battery when I was wounded has since been wiped out.
      Even some who joined since have been done for. Three have been killed, the
      rest wounded, gassed, and the major has gone out with concussion. Among
      the killed is poor S., the one who was my best friend in France, You
      remember he had a young wife, and his first baby was born in February. He
      used to carry the list of all the people I wanted written to if I were
      killed, and I had promised to do the same for him. In addition to the
      officers, many of the men whom I admired have &ldquo;gone west.&rdquo; All
      this was told me casually in the heart of London's pleasure, with
      the taxis and buses streaming by.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days ago a pitiful derelict of the streets crossed my path. I'd
      been dining out in the West End with L. and P. and was on my way back,
      when a girl stopped me. She stopped me for the usual reason, and I suppose
      I refused her rudely. The next thing I knew she was crying. She said she
      had been walking for twelve hours, and was cold and tired, and ready to
      fall from weariness. It was very late, and I scarcely knew where to take
      her, but we found a little French restaurant open in Gerrard Street. On
      coming into the light, I discovered that she had a little toy dog under
      her arm, just as tired of life as herself. It was significant that she
      attended to the dog's before her own needs. We had to tempt it with
      milk before it would eat&mdash;then she set to work herself ravenously. I
      learnt her story by bits. She was a discharged munition worker, had
      strained herself lifting shells, and hadn't the brains or strength
      for anything but the streets. When she left the restaurant the lap-dog was
      again tucked beneath her arm. It was nearly midnight when she disappeared
      in the raw chilliness of the scant electric light. People die worse deaths
      than on battle-fields.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>Wednesday</i>.&mdash;I've been working for the last three days at
      the Minister's, and still have no inkling of what is to happen to
      me. My major walked in to-day; he wants me to wait till his sick-leave is
      over, after which we can return together. He'll put in a strong
      personal request for me to be allowed to return. He got concussion of the
      brain eight weeks ago through a shell bursting in his dug-out. S. was
      wounded at the same time, but didn't go out till next day. He had
      got one hundred yards from the battery when he and his batman were killed
      instantly by the same shell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Reggie wasn't in town when I arrived. He didn't meet me till
      Friday. What with playing with him and working here I don't get much
      time for writing. But you'll hear from me again quite soon.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      The Ritz, London <i>November</i> 15, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his hanging round
      London seems a very poor way to help win a war. I couldn't stand
      very much of it, however invaluable they pretended I was, when my pals are
      dying out there. Poor old S.! He's in my thoughts every hour of the
      day. He was always getting new photos of his little daughter. He longed
      for a Blighty that he might see her again. He was wounded, but stopped on
      duty for two days. At last, only one hundred yards down the trench on his
      way to the dressing-station a shell caught him. He was dead in an instant.
      Before the Vimy show two of our chaps in the mess had peculiar dreams: one
      saw D.'. grave and the other S.'.. Both S. and D. are dead.
      The effect that all this has on me is not what might be expected&mdash;makes
      me the more anxious to get back. I hate to think that others are going
      sleepless and cold and are in danger, and that I am not there. When the
      memory comes at meal-times I feel like leaving the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was ripping to hear from you last night. Your letter greeted me as I
      returned from the theatre. We'd been out with my major. At the
      theatre we picked up with a plucky chap, named K., who belonged to the
      same battery as B., to whom, you remember, I was carrying a present from
      some girl in New York. The present which she was so keen should reach him
      by Christmas turned out to be a neck-tie which she had knitted for him. On
      asking K., I found out that B. was killed on October 31st. It's the
      same story all the time so far as the 18-pounders are concerned.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Reggie leaves me I'm going to start on another book, <i>Out to
      Win</i>, which is to be an interpretation for England of the new spirit
      which is animating America, and a plea for a closer sense of kinship
      between my two nations.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't worry about me, you'll get a cabled warning before I go
      to France. My major expects to go back in a month or two, and we've
      arranged to return together if possible. But you needn't get worried&mdash;I'm
      afraid I shall probably spend Christmas in London.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      The Ritz, London <i>November</i> 17, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>our minds can be
      at rest as regards my safety for a few weeks at least. I've been
      collared for fair, but I think I'll manage to get free again
      presently. I suppose you'll say that I'm a donkey to want so
      much to get back to the Front; perhaps I am&mdash;the war will last quite
      long enough for every man in khaki to get very much more of it than he can
      comfortably stomach. The proper soldierly attitude is to take every
      respite as it turns up and be grateful for it. But then I'm not a
      professional soldier. I think in saying that I've laid my finger on
      the entire reason for the splendour of our troops&mdash;that they're
      not professional soldiers, but civilian idealists. Your professional
      soldier isn't particularly keen on death&mdash;his game is to live
      that he may fight another day. Our game is to fight and fight and fight so
      long as we have an ounce of strength left. My major and myself are all
      that are left of the officers in my battery. A great many of our best men
      are gone. They need us back to help them out.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here's a story of stories&mdash;one which answers all the questions
      one hears asked as to whether the Army doesn't lower a man's
      morals and turn saints into blackguards.
    </p>
    <p>
      When we were on the Somme, a batch of very worthless-appearing remounts
      arrived at our wagon-lines direct from England. When they were paraded
      before us, they made the rottenest impression&mdash;they looked like
      molly-coddles whom the Army had cowed. Among them was a particularly
      inoffensive-looking young man who had been a dental student, whom, if the
      Huns could have seen him as a sample of the kind of reinforcements we were
      getting, they would certainly have taken new courage to win the war. All
      the officers growled and prayed God for a consignment of the old
      rough-and-tumble knockabout chaps who came out of gaols, from under
      freight-trains, and from lumber-camps to die like gentlemen&mdash;the only
      gentlemanly thing some of them ever did, I expect&mdash;with the Canadian
      First Contingent.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few weeks later we sent back to the wagonlines for a servant to be sent
      up to the guns, two of our batmen having been killed and a third having
      been returned to duty. The wagon-line officer sent us up this fellow with
      the following note: &ldquo;I'm sending you X. He's the most
      useless chap I have&mdash;not bad, but a ninny. I hope he'll suit
      you.&rdquo; He didn't. He could never carry out an order correctly,
      and seemed scared stiff: by any N.C.O. or officer. We got rid of him
      promptly. When he returned to the wagon-lines, he was put on to all the
      fatigues and dirty jobs.
    </p>
    <p>
      The first time we got any hint that the chap had guts was when we were out
      at rest at Christmas. He'd been shifted from one section to another,
      because no one wanted him.. Each new Number One as he received him put him
      on to his worst horses, so as to get rid of him the more quickly. The chap
      was grooming a very ticklish mare, when she up with her hind-legs and
      caught him in the chest, throwing him about twenty yards into the mud. He
      lay stunned for a full minute; we thought he was done. Then, in a dazed
      kind of way, he got upon his feet. He was told he could fall out, but he
      insisted upon finishing the grooming of his horse. When the stable parade
      was dismissed, much against his will he was sent to be inspected by the
      Brigade doctor.
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor looked him over and said, &ldquo;I ought to send you out to a
      hospital, but I'll see how you are to-morrow. You must go back to
      your billets and keep quiet. The kick has chipped the point of your
      breast-bone.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;It didn't,&rdquo; said Driver X., &ldquo;and I'm not
      going to lie down.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      The doctor, who is very small, looked as much like the Last Judgment as
      his size would allow. &ldquo;You'll do what you're told,&rdquo;
      he said sharply. &ldquo;You'll find yourself up for office if you
      speak to me like that. If I told you that both your legs were broken, they
      would be broken. You don't know very much about the Army, my lad.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;But my breast-bone isn't chipped,&rdquo; he insisted.
      Contrary to orders he was out on the afternoon parade and was up to
      morning stables next day at six o'clock. When strafed for his
      disobedience, he looked mild and inoffensive and obstinate. He refused to
      be considered, and won out. You can punish chaps for things like that; but
      you don't.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next thing we noticed about him was that he was learning to swear.
      Then he began to look rough, so that no one would have guessed that he
      came from a social grade different from that of the other men. And this
      was the stage he had arrived at when I got wounded last summer and left
      the battery. The story of his further progress was completed for me this
      week when I met my major in town.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who's the latest hero, do you think?", he questioned. &ldquo;You'd
      never guess&mdash;the dental student. He did one of the most splendid bits
      of work that was ever done by an Artillery driver.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      Here's what he did. He was sent along a heavily shelled road at
      nightfall to collect material from blown-in dug-outs for building our new
      battery position. He was wheel-driver on a G.S. wagon which had three
      teams hooked into it. There was a party of men with him to scout up the
      material and an N.C.O. in charge. As they were halted, backed up against
      an embankment, a shell landed plumb into the wagon, crippling it badly,
      wounding all the horses and every man except the ex-dental student. The
      teams bolted, and it was mainly due to the efforts of the wheel-driver
      that the stampede was checked. He must have used quite a lot of language
      which really polite people would not have approved. He then bound up all
      the wounds of his comrades&mdash;there was no one to help him&mdash;and
      took them back to the field dressing-station two at a time, mounted on two
      of the least wounded horses. When he had carried them all to safety, he
      removed their puttees and went back alone along the shelled road to the
      wounded horses and used the puttees to stop their flow of blood. He
      managed to get the wagon clear, so that it could be pulled. He tied four
      of the horses on behind; hooked in the two that were strongest, and
      brought the lot back to the wagonlines single-handed.
    </p>
    <p>
      And here's the end of the story. The O.C. put in a strong
      recommendation that he be decorated for his humanity and courage. The
      award came through in the record time of fourteen days, with about a yard
      of Military Medal ribbon and congratulations from high officers all along
      the line. The morning of the day it came through thieving had been
      discovered in the battery, and a warning had been read out that the
      culprit was suspected, and that it would go hard with him when he was
      arrested. The decoration was received in the afternoon while
      harness-cleaning was in progress. Without loss of time the O.C. went out,
      a very stern look on his face, and had the battery formed up in a hollow
      square. There was only one thought in the men's heads&mdash;that the
      thief had been found. There was a kind of &ldquo;Is it I&rdquo; look in
      their faces. Without explanation, the O.C. called upon the ex-dental
      student to fall out. He fell out with his knees knocking and his chin
      wobbling, looking quite the guilty party. Then the O.C. commenced to read
      all the praise from officers at Brigade, Division, Corps, Army, of the
      gallant wheel-driver who had not only risked his life to save his pals,
      but had even had the fineness of forethought to bind up the horses'
      wounds with the puttees. Then came the yard of Military Medal ribbon, a
      piece of which was snipped off and pinned on to the lad's worn
      tunic. The battery yelled itself crimson. The dental student had learnt to
      swear, but he'd won his spurs. He's been promoted to the most
      dangerous and coveted job for a gunner or driver in the artillery; he's
      been put on to the B.C. party, which has to go forward into all the warm
      spots to observe the enemy and to lay in wire with the infantry when a
      &ldquo;show&rdquo; is in progress. Can you wonder that I get weary of
      seeing the London buses trundle along the well-swept asphalt of Oxford
      Street and long to take my chance once more with such chaps?
    </p>
    <h3>
      XIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>November</i> 29, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's such a
      November London day as no American ever imagines. A feeling of spring and
      greenness is in the air, and a glint of subdued gold. This morning as I
      came across Battersea Bridge it seemed as though war could not be&mdash;that,
      at worst, it was only an incident. The river lay below me so old and
      good-humoured&mdash;in front Cheyne Walk comfortably ancient and asleep.
      Through the chimneys and spires of the distant city blue scarfs of mist
      twisted and floated. Everything looked very happy. Boys&mdash;juvenile
      cannon-fodder&mdash;went whistling along the streets; housemaids leant
      shyly out of upstairs windows, shaking dusters to attract their attention.
      In the square by the Chelsea Pensioners, soldiers, all spit and polish,
      were going through their foot-drill; they didn't look too earnest
      about it&mdash;not at all as if in two months they would be in the
      trenches. It's the same with the men on leave&mdash;they live their
      fourteen days with cheery common sense as though they were going to live
      for ever. It's impossible, even when you meet the wounded, to
      discover any signs of tragedy in London. The war is referred to as &ldquo;good
      old war,&rdquo; &ldquo;a bean-feast,&rdquo; &ldquo;a pretty little scrap,&rdquo;
      but never as an undertaking of blood and torture. Last night there was
      strong moonlight, very favourable to an air raid. When I bought my paper
      this morning, the fat woman, all burst out and tied in at the most
      unexpected places, remarked to me with an air of disappointment: &ldquo;They
      fergot h'us.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Who forgot us?&rdquo; I asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;The bloomin' 'Uns. I wus h'expecting them lawst
      night.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      She spoke as though she'd had tea ready and the kettle boiling for a
      dear friend who had mis-remembered his engagement. England has set out to
      behave as if there was no death; she's jolly nearly succeeded in
      eliminating it from her thoughts. She's learnt the lesson of the
      chaps in the front-line trenches, and she's like a mother&mdash;like
      our mother&mdash;who has sons at the war&mdash;she's going to keep
      on smiling so as not to let her fellows down.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the streets are full of girls in khaki&mdash;girls with the neatest,
      trimmest little ankles. The smartest of all are the Flying Corps girls,
      many of whom drive the army cars in the most daring manner. When you think
      of what they are and were, the war hasn't done so badly for them.
      They were purposeless before. Their whole aim was to get married. They
      felt that they weren't wanted in the world. They broke windows with
      Mother Pankhurst. Now they've learnt discipline and duty and
      courage. They'd man the trenches if we'd let them. They used
      to sneer at our sex; whether they married or remained single, quite a
      number of them became man-haters. But now&mdash;that kind of civil war is
      ended. Ask the young subaltern back on leave how much he is disliked by
      the girls. Babies and home have become the fashion. I received quite a
      shock last Sunday when I was saluted by one of these girls&mdash;saluted
      in a perfectly correct and soldierly fashion. The idea is right; if they
      outwardly acknowledge that they are a part of the Army, military
      discipline becomes their protection. But what a queer, changed world from
      the world of sloppy blouses, cheap and much-too-frequent jewellery, and
      silly sentimental ogling! England's become more alert and
      forthright; despite the war, she's happier. This isn't meant
      for a glorification of war; it's simply a statement of fact. The
      time had to come when women would become men; they've become men in
      this most noble and womanly fashion&mdash;through service. They're
      doing men's jobs with women's alacrity.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is only one thing that will keep me from rejoining my battery in
      January, and that's this American book. We have come to the
      conclusion that to complete the picture of American determination to win
      out, I ought to go on a tour of inspection in France. The Government is
      interested in the book for propaganda work. The extreme worthwhileness of
      such an undertaking would reconcile me to a postponement of my return to
      the Front&mdash;nothing else will. All the papers here are full of the
      details of the advance at Cambrai. I want to be &ldquo;out there&rdquo; so
      badly. What does it matter that there's mud in the trenches, and
      death round every traverse, and danger in each step? It's the hour
      of glorious life I long for; for such an hour I would exchange all the
      sheeted beds and running bath-taps, not to mention the æons of Cathay. I
      can see those gunners forcing up their guns through the mire, and can hear
      the machine guns clicking away like infuriated typewriters. The whole
      gigantic pageant of death and endeavour moves before me&mdash;and I'm
      sick of clubs and safety. People say to me, &ldquo;You're of more
      use here&mdash;you can serve your country better by being in England.&rdquo;
      But when chaps are dying I want to take my chance with them. Don't
      be afraid I'll be kept here. <i>I won't</i>. I didn't
      know till I was held back against my will what a grip that curious
      existence at the Front had got on me. It isn't the horror one
      remembers&mdash;it's the exhilaration of the glory.
    </p>
    <p>
      Cheer up, I'll be home some Christmas to fill your Christmas
      stocking. It won't be this Christmas&mdash;perhaps not the next; but
      perhaps the next after that. The young gentlemen from the Navy will be
      there too to help me. It's a promise.
    </p>
    <p>
      I was present at the opening of the American Officers' Club by the
      Duke of Connaught. This club is the private house of Lord Leconfield.
      Other people have presented furniture, pictures, and money. It costs an
      American officer next to nothing, and is the best attempt that has been
      made to give a welcome to the U.S.A. in London. It's the most
      luxurious club in the West End at present.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XX
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>December</i> 10, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> got a letter from
      the Foreign Office, asking me to go back to America to do writing and
      lecturing for the British Mission. I'm sure you'll appreciate
      why I refused it, and be glad. I couldn't come back to U.S.A. to
      talk about nobilities when their sons and brothers are getting their first
      baptism of fire in the trenches. If I'd got anything worth saying I
      ought to be out there in the mud&mdash;saying it in deeds. But I've
      told Colonel B. that if ever I come out again wounded I will join the
      British Mission for a time. So now you have something to look forward to.
    </p>
    <p>
      I hear though that permission will probably be granted to me within the
      next few days to start for France to go through the American lines and
      activities. You can guess how interesting that will be to me. I only hope
      they have a fight on while I'm in the American lines. I suppose the
      tour will take me the best part of a month, so I'll be away from
      England for Christmas. I rather hope I'll be in Paris&mdash;ever
      since reading <i>Trilby</i> I've longed to go to the Madeleine for
      Noël&mdash;which reminds me that I must get <i>Trilby</i> to read on the
      journey. It's rather a romantic life that I'm having nowadays,
      don't you think? I romp all over the globe and, in the intervals,
      have a crack at the Germans.
    </p>
    <p>
      After I have finished writing this book on the American activities in
      France I shan't be content a moment till I've rejoined my
      battery. I feel a terrible shyster stopping away from the fighting a day
      longer than can be helped. This book, which I intend to be a spiritual
      interpretation of the soul of America, ought to do good to Anglo-American
      relations; so it seems of sufficiently vital importance. I can't
      think of anything that would do more to justify the blotting out of so
      many young lives than that, when the war is ended, England and America
      should have reason to forget the last hundred and thirty years of history,
      joining hands in a worldwide Anglo-Saxon alliance against the future
      murdering of nations. If I can contribute anything towards bringing that
      about, the missing of two months in the trenches will be worth it.
    </p>
    <p>
      I went to a &ldquo;good luck&rdquo; dinner the other night, which we gave
      to my major on the occasion of his setting sail for Canada. Two others of
      the officers who used to be with me in the battery are to be on the same
      ship. A year ago in the Somme we used to pray for a Blighty&mdash;to-day,
      every officer in our mess has either got a Blighty or is dead. It gives
      one some idea of the brevity of our glory.
    </p>
    <p>
      You'd love the West End shops were you here. I've just drawn
      down my blinds on Oxford Street; I walked back by way of Regent Street
      after lunch&mdash;all the windows are gay and full. Men in khaki are
      punting their girls through the crowds, doing their Christmas shopping.
      You can see the excited faces of little children everywhere. There doesn't
      seem to be much hint of war. One wonders whether people are brave to smile
      so much or only careless. You hear of tremendous lists of casualties, but
      there are just as many men. It looks as though we had man-power and
      resources to carry on the war interminably. There's only one class
      of person who is fed-up&mdash;and that's the person who has done
      least sacrificing. The person who has done none at all is a nervous wreck
      and can't stand the strain much longer. But ask the fighting men&mdash;they're
      perfectly happy and contented. Curious! When you've given
      everything, you can always give some more.
    </p>
    <p>
      This may reach you before Christmas, though I doubt it. If it does, be as
      merry as we shall be, though absent.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXI
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>December</i> 10, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> hope you feel as
      I do about my refusal of Colonel B.'. offer to send me back to
      America on the British Mission. I was also approached to-day to do press
      work for the Canadians. It seems as though everyone was conspiring to
      throw tempting plums in my way to keep me from returning to the Front. I
      don't know that I'm much good as a soldier; probably I'm
      very much better as a writer; but it's as though my soul, my
      decency, my honour were at stake&mdash;I must get back to the Front. The
      war is going to be won by men who go back to the trenches in the face of
      reason and common sense. If I had a leg off I should try for the Flying
      Corps. I may be a fool in the Front line, but I won't be finished as
      a fighting man till I'm done. They can keep all their cushy jobs for
      other chaps&mdash;I want the mud and the pounding of the guns. It doesn't
      really matter if one does get killed, provided he's set a good
      example. Do you remember that sermon we heard Dr. Jowett give about St.
      Paul at Lystra, going back after they had stoned him? &ldquo;Back to the
      stones&rdquo;&mdash;that expresses me exactly. I hate shell-fire and
      discomfort and death as much as any other man. But I'd rather lose
      everything than have to say good-bye to my standard of heroism. I don't
      want to kill Huns particularly, but I do want to prove to them that we're
      the better men. I can't do that by going through oratorical
      gymnastics in America or by writing racy descriptions of the Canadians'
      bravery for the international press. I shall be less than nothing when I
      return to France&mdash;merely subaltern whose life isn't very highly
      valued. But in my heart I shall know myself a man. There's no one
      understands my motive but you three, who have most to lose by my
      cripplement or death. All my friends over here think me an ass to throw
      away such chances&mdash;they say I'm economically squandering myself
      in the place where I'm least trained to do the best work. I know
      they talk sense; but they don't talk chivalry. If every man took the
      first chance offered him to get out of the catastrophe, where would the
      Huns' offensive end?
    </p>
    <p>
      You've probably been writing hard at <i>The Father of a Soldier</i>,
      and saying all that you would like to say to me in that. I'm most
      anxious to see the manuscript of it. If you please, how could the son of
      the man who wrote that book accept a cushy job?
    </p>
    <p>
      I wonder if you've reached the point yet where you don't think
      that dying matters? I suspect you have. You remember what Roosevelt said
      after seeing his last son off, &ldquo;If he comes back he'll have to
      explain to me the why and how.&rdquo; That's the Japanese spirit&mdash;honour
      demands when a man returns from battle that he can give good reasons why
      he is not dead. Others, his friends and comrades, are dead; how does he
      happen to be living? In that connection I think of Charlie S., lying
      somewhere in the mud of Ypres, with an insignificant cross above his head.
      He won a dozen decorations which were not given him. He had a baby whom he
      had only seen once. He was my pal. Why should I live, while he is dead? I
      can always hear him singing in the mess in a pleasant tenor voice. We used
      to share our affections and our troubles. He was what the Canadians call
      &ldquo;a white man.&rdquo; I can't see myself living in comfort
      while he is dead. It's odd the things one remembers about a man. We
      got the idea in the Somme that oil on the feet would prevent them from
      becoming frozen. One time when Charlie was going up forward we hadn't
      any oil, so he used brilliantine. It smelt of violets, and we made the
      highest of game of him. Poor old Charlie, he doesn't feel the cold
      now!
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm afraid I've written a lot of rot in this letter&mdash;I've
      talked far too much of a host of things which are better left unsaid. But
      I had to&mdash;I wanted to make quite certain that you wouldn't
      blame me for refusing safety. I've relieved myself immensely by
      getting all of this off my chest.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>December</i> 17, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m waiting
      for Eric, and, while waiting, propose to tell you the story of my past few
      days. I think when you've come to the end of my account you'll
      agree that I've been mixing my drinks considerably with regard to
      the personalities whose acquaintance I have made.
    </p>
    <p>
      On Friday evening I was invited to dinner by Lieutenant C., the American
      Navy man with whom I crossed in November. I met&mdash;whom do you think?&mdash;George
      Grossmith, Leslie Henson, Julia James, Madge Saunders, and Lord C&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;.
    </p>
    <p>
      I may say that Lord C&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;is not a member of the
      Gaiety Company, though I seem to have included him. The occasion was
      really the weekly dinner given by the American Officers' Club; the
      Gaiety Company was there to entertain. I think it is typical of England's
      attitude towards the American Army that people from such different walks
      of life should have been present to do the U.S.A. honour. Lord C&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;is
      a splendid type of old-fashioned courtier, with a great, kindly,
      bloodhound face. He had ensigns and officers of whatsoever rank brought to
      him, and spoke to them with the fine manly equality of the true-bred
      aristocrat. It was amusing to see the breezy American boys quite
      unembarrassed, most of them unaware of Lord C&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;'s
      political eminence, exchanging views in the friendliest of fashions, while
      the old gentleman, keeping seated, leaning forward on his stick with one
      hand resting attentively on a young fellow's arm, expressed his warm
      appreciation of America's eagerness.
    </p>
    <p>
      Grossmith was in the uniform our boys wear&mdash;that of a lieutenant in
      the R.N.V.R. Leslie Henson is now a mechanic in the motor-transport by day
      and a Gaiety star in the evenings. He says that it costs him much money to
      cure the ache which the Army gives to his back&mdash;but he continues to
      do his &ldquo;bit&rdquo; by day and to amuse Tommies home on leave in the
      evenings.
    </p>
    <p>
      Next day, Saturday, I went down to Bath to meet Raemaekers, the Dutch
      cartoonist. Mr. Lane was our host. Raemaekers is a great man. On the
      journey I tried to picture him. I saw him as a pale-faced man, with lank
      black hair and a touch of the Jew about him. I rather expected to find him
      worn and slightly more than middle-aged, with nervous hands and hollow
      eyes. I reminded myself that of the world's artists, he was the only
      one who had risen to the sheerness of the occasion. He expresses the
      conscience of the aloof cosmopolitan as regards Germany's
      war-methods. England, incurably good-humoured, has only Bairnsfather's
      comic portrayals of Old Bill to place beside this indignant Dutchman's
      moral hatred of Hun cruelty. From the station I went to the Bath Club;
      there I met not at all what I had imagined. He looks like a Frans Hals
      burgher, comfortable, with a high complexion, a small pointed beard,
      chestnut hair, and searching grey eyes. His charity of appearance belies
      him, for his eyes and mouth have a terrific purpose. His hands are the
      hands of a fighting man which crush. You would pass him in the street as
      unremarkable unless he looked at you&mdash;his eyes are daggers which stop
      you dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      There were four of us at lunch&mdash;he sat at my right and we talked like
      a river in flood. He's just back from America, thrilled by the
      Americans' unimpassioned, lawful thoroughness. He had found
      something akin to his own temperament in the nation's genius&mdash;the
      same capacity to brush aside facetiousness in a crisis, and to attain a
      Hebrew prophet's faculty for hatred. One doesn't want to laugh
      when women lie dead in the ash-pits of Belgium. I have been with him many
      hours and have scarcely seen him smile, and yet his face is kindly. As you
      know, the Kaiser had set a price upon his head. His death would mean more
      to the Hun than the destruction of many British Divisions. He has
      pilloried the Kaiser's beastliness for all time. When future ages
      want to know what the Kaiser said to Christ, they will find it all in the
      thousand Raemaekers' sketches. Traps have been laid for his capture
      from time to time. Submarines have been dispatched with orders to take him
      alive. He knows what awaits him if such plans should meet with success&mdash;a
      lingering, tortured death; consequently he travels armed, and has promised
      his wife to blow his brains out the moment he is captured. We talked of
      many things&mdash;of the Hague and H. among other things. He knew the P.'.,
      and drew a sketch of Mr. P. on the tablecloth with his pencil. I tried to
      purchase the tablecloth that I might send it to America, but the club
      secretary was before me.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the afternoon I went to the railway-station and spoke with a porter who
      was pushing a barrow&mdash;Henry Chappell, who wrote &ldquo;The Day&rdquo;&mdash;the
      first war-poet of 1914. As luck would have it, it was Saturday, the day
      upon which John Lane had brought out his volume of poems; it was rather
      pathetic to find him carrying on with his humble task on the proudest
      afternoon of his life. I told him how I had seen his poem pasted up in
      prominent places all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He smiled
      in a patient fashion, and said that he had heard about it. I understand
      that he made one hundred pounds out of this poem and gave it all to the
      Red Cross. A gentleman, if you want to find one! I asked him if he didn't
      look forward to promotion now. He shook his head gravely&mdash;he liked
      portering. At parting I shook his hand, but, when I had dropped it, he
      touched his cap&mdash;and touched my heart in the doing of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      On Sunday I was back in town. Eric turned up this morning, looking gallant
      and smiling, with an exceedingly glad eye. He's just the same as he
      always was, discontented with his job because he thinks it's too
      safe and trying to find one more dangerous. We're going to have a
      great time together, unless I get my marching orders from the Foreign
      Office.
    </p>
    <p>
      I lunched with Raemaekers at Claridge's today and have just come
      back. He's an elemental moralist, encased in a burgher's
      exterior. He affects me with a sense of restrained power. One is surprised
      to see him eating like other men. How I wish that I could detest as he
      detests! And yet he has heart in plenty. He told me a story of a French
      battalion going out to die. The last soldier stepped out of the ranks
      towards his colonel, who was weeping for his men who would not come back.
      Flinging his arms about his commanding officer, he kissed him and said,
      &ldquo;Do not fear, my Colonel; we shall not disgrace you.&rdquo; He has
      an eye for magnanimity, that man.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>December</i> 31, 1917
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his foggy London
      morning early your three letters from 5th to 18th December arrived. I
      jumped out of bed, lit the gas, retreated under the blankets, and devoured
      them, leaning on my elbow.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is the last day of the old year&mdash;a quaint old year it has been
      for all of us. I commenced it quite reconciled to the thought that it
      would be my last; and here I am, while poor Charlie S. and so many other
      fellows whom I loved are dead. It only shows how very foolish it is to
      anticipate trouble, for the last twelve months have been the very best and
      richest of my life. If I were to die now, I should feel that I had at
      least done something with my handful of years.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'd like to have another glimpse of America now that in the face of
      reverses she has grown sterner. It's certain at last that there'll
      be a lot of American boys who won't come back. They're going
      to be real soldiers, going to go over the top and to endure all the fierce
      heroisms of an attack. It's cruel to say so, but it's better
      for America's soul that she should have her taste of battle after
      all the shouting.
    </p>
    <p>
      On Saturday F. R. came to see us. He's home on leave. He and P. and
      I sitting down together after all the years that have intervened since we
      were at Oxford together! As F. expressed it, blinking through his
      spectacles, &ldquo;Doesn't it seem silly that I should be dressed up
      like this and that you should be dressed like that?&rdquo; He went out in
      January as a second lieutenant, and returned commanding his battalion. God
      moves in a mysterious way, doesn't He? One can't help
      wondering why some should &ldquo;go west&rdquo; at once and others should
      be spared. Bob H., who was also with us at Oxford, as you will remember,
      lasted exactly six days. The first day in the trenches he was wounded, but
      not sufficiently to go out. The sixth day he was killed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Did I tell you that there's a nerve hospital near here crowded with
      nerve-shattered babies on one floor and nerve-shattered Tommies on the
      next? The babies are all dressed in red and the Tommies in the usual
      hospital blue. Each day the shell-shocked chaps go up to visit the
      children; the moment the door opens and the blue figures appear, the
      little red crowd stretch out their arms and cry, &ldquo;My soldier! My
      soldier!&rdquo; for each Tommy has his own particular pet. When a child
      gets a nervous attack, it is often only the one particular soldier who can
      do the soothing. Who'd think that men fresh from the carnage could
      be so tender! And people say that war makes men brutal. Humph!
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      A French Port
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>January</i> 3, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am again in
      France and extraordinarily glad to be here. I feel that I'm again a
      part of the game&mdash;I couldn't feel that while I was in London. I
      landed here this morning and arrive in Paris to-night. The crossing was
      one of the quietest. I know a lot of people didn't lie down at all,
      and still others slept with their clothes on. Like a sensible fellow I
      crept into my berth at 9 p.m., and slept like a top till morning. If we'd
      been submarined I shouldn't have known it.
    </p>
    <p>
      I feel tremendously elated by the thought of this new adventure, and
      intend to make the most of it. As you know, nothing would have persuaded
      me to delay my return to the Front except an opportunity for doing work of
      these dimensions. I really do believe that I have the chance of a lifetime
      to do work of international importance. I want to make the Americans feel
      that they have become our kinsmen through the magnitude of their
      endeavour. And I want to make the British shake off their reticence in
      applauding the magnanimity of America's enthusiasm.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's been snowing here; but I don't feel cold because of the
      warmth inside me. The place where I am now is one of the pleasure-haunts
      which Eric and I visited together in that golden summer of long ago.
      Little did I think that I should be here next time in such belligerent
      attire and on such an errand. Life's a queer kaleidoscope. But, oh,
      for such another summer, with the long secure peace of July days, and the
      whole green world to wander! One doubts whether El Dorado will ever come
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      I see the girl-soldiers of England everywhere nowadays. A reinforcing
      draft crossed over with me on the steamer&mdash;high complexions and
      laughing faces, trim uniforms and tiny ankles. They're brave! It's
      a pity we can't give them a chance of just one crack at the Huns.
      But they have to stop behind the lines and drive lorries, and be good
      girls, and beat typewriters. Their little girl-officers are mighty
      dignified. What a gallant world! I wouldn't have it otherwise.
    </p>
    <p>
      For me the New Year is starting well. I face it in higher spirits than any
      of its predecessors. And well I may, for I didn't expect to be alive
      to greet 1918. I hope you are all just as much on the crest of the wave in
      your hopes and anticipations. Nothing can be worse than some of the
      experiences that lie behind&mdash;and that's some comfort. Nothing
      can be more chivalrous than the opportunities which lie before us.
    </p>
    <p>
      So here's good-bye to you from France once again.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXV
    </h3>
    <p>
      Paris <i>January</i> 8, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am in Paris,
      starting on my new adventure of writing the story of what the Americans
      are doing in the war. I left England on 2nd January, which was a
      Wednesday, and arrived here Thursday evening. As you know, while I was in
      the Front line I had very little idea of what France at war was like. One
      crossed from England, clambered on a military train with all the windows
      smashed, had a cold night journey, and found himself at once among the
      shell-holes. I was very keen on seeing what Paris was like; now that I've
      seen it, it's very difficult to describe. It's very much the
      same as it always was&mdash;only while its atmosphere was once champagne,
      now it is a strong, still wine. As in England, only to a greater extent,
      women are doing the work of men. The streets are full of the wounded&mdash;not
      the wounded with well-fitted artificial limbs that you see in London, but
      with ordinary wooden stumps, etc. Our English wounded are always gay and
      laughing&mdash;determined to treat the war as a humorous episode to the
      end. The French wounded are grave, afflicted, and ordinary. I think the
      Frenchman, with an emotional honesty of which we are incapable, has from
      the first viewed the war as a colossal Calvary, and has seen it against
      the historic skyline of a travailing world. Never by speech or gesture has
      he disguised the fact that he, as an individual, is engaged in a
      fore-ordained and unparalleled adventure of sacrifice. The Englishman,
      self-conscious of his own heroic gallantry, cloaks his fineness with
      pretended indifference and has succeeded in deceiving the world. Our
      sportsmanship in the face of death impresses more complex nations as
      irreligion. So while London is outwardly gayer than ever, Paris has a
      stiff upper lip, a look of sternness in its eyes, and very little laughter
      on its mouth. By nine-thirty in the evening every restaurant is closed,
      and the streets are empty till the soldiers on leave troop out from the
      theatres.
    </p>
    <p>
      As for the food, I have seen no shortage in France as yet. You can get
      plenty of butter and sugar, whereas in London margarine is rare and sugar
      is doled out. The talk of France being ex hausted is all rubbish; you can
      feel the muscles of a great nation struggling the moment you land.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have had a most kindly and helpful reception from the American Press
      Division. They have realized with the usual American quickness of mind the
      importance of what I propose to do. One of their officers starts out with
      me to-night on my first tour of military activities. It will take about
      five days. I then return to Paris to write up what I have seen, and
      afterwards set out again in a new direction. If I take the proper
      advantage of my opportunities, I ought to get an amazingly interesting lot
      of material.
    </p>
    <p>
      Saturday I was lucky enough to secure a car, and went the round of my
      introductions, to the British Embassy and your friends from Newark.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've been to two theatres. The audiences were composed for the most
      part of soldiers on leave&mdash;American, British, Canadian, Australian,
      Belgian, French, with the merest sprinkling of civilians. Sunday I walked
      through the Luxembourg, most of the galleries of which are closed.
      Afterwards I walked in the Gardens and watched the Parisians sliding on
      the ice. For the moment they forgot they were at war, and became children.
      There were little boys and girls, soldiers with their sweethearts, fat old
      men and women, all running and pushing and sliding and falling and
      chattering. I thought of Trilby with her grave, kind eyes. Then I walked
      down the Boule Miche to Notre Dame, where women were praying for their
      dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-day Paris is under snow, and again the child spirit has asserted
      itself. Soldiers and sailors are pelting one another with snowballs in the
      streets, and Jupiter continues to pluck his geese and send their feathers
      drifting down the sky.
    </p>
    <p>
      This time last year I was marching into action with temperature of 104
      degrees, and you were reaching London, wondering whether I was truly
      coming on leave. A queer year it has been; in spite of all our
      anticipations to the contrary, we're still alive. I wish we were to
      meet again this year, and we may. We know so little. As Whitcomb Riley
      says in complete acceptance of human fortuitousness, &ldquo;No child knows
      when it goes to sleep.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      Paris
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>January</i> 13, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>bout an hour ago I
      got into Paris from my first trip. I've been where M. and I spent
      our splendid summer so many years ago, only now the river is spanned with
      ice and the country is a grey-sage colour. From what I can see the
      Americans are preparing as if for a war that is going to last for thirty
      years. America is in the war literally to her last man and her last
      dollar; when her hour comes to strike, she will be like a second England
      in the fight.
    </p>
    <p>
      I made my tour with an officer who was with Hoover three years in Belgium,
      and who before that was a student in Paris. As a consequence, he speaks
      French like a native. Every detail of my trip was arranged ahead by
      telephone and telegram; automobiles were waiting. There is no pretence
      about the American Army. My rank as lieutenant is, of course, quite
      inadequate to the task I have undertaken. But the American high officer
      carries no side or swank. Having produced my credentials, I am seated at
      the mess beside generals and allowed to ask any questions, however
      searching. Everyone I have met as yet is hats off to the English and the
      French&mdash;they go out of their way to make comparisons which are in
      their own disfavour and unjust to themselves. I have been making a
      particular study of their transport facilities and their artillery
      training. Both are being carried out on a magnificently thorough scale. I
      undertake to assert that they will have as fine artillery as can be found
      on the Western Front by the time they are ready. I certainly never saw
      such painstaking and methodical training.
    </p>
    <p>
      As you know, the phase of the war that I am particularly interested in is
      the closeness of international relations that will result when the war is
      ended. The tightening of bonds between the French, Americans and English
      can be daily witnessed and felt. The Americans are loud in their praise of
      their French and British instructors&mdash;the instructors are equally
      proud of their pupils. On the street, in hotels and trains, the three
      races hobnob together.
    </p>
    <p>
      I came back to-day with a French artillery and cavalry officer&mdash;splendid
      fellows. We had fought together on the Somme, we discovered, and had
      occupied the same Front, though at separate times, at Vimy. The
      artilleryman was a young French noble, and, as only noblemen can these
      days, had a car waiting for him at the station He insisted on taking me to
      my hotel, and we parted the most excellent friends.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have two days in which to write up my experiences, and on Tuesday I
      shall set out on a tour in a new direction. So much I am able to tell you;
      the rest will be in my book when it is published.
    </p>
    <p>
      This time last year we were together in London&mdash;how long ago it seems
      and sounds! Years are longer and of more value than they once were. This
      year I'm here. Next year where? This time next year the war will not
      be ended, I'm certain, nor even the year after that, perhaps. The
      more we feel our strength, the more we are called upon to suffer, the
      sterner will become our terms.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's nearly eleven, my dear ones, and time that I was asleep. I have
      Henri Bordeaux's story of <i>The Last Days of Fort Vaux</i> beside
      me&mdash;it's most heroic reading. What shall we do when the gates
      of heroism grow narrow and peace has been declared? Something spiritual
      will have gone out of life when the challenge of the horrible is ended.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      Paris
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>January</i> 19, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m expecting
      to go to American Headquarters on Tuesday and to see something of work
      immediately behind the lines. I find what I am doing exceptionally
      interesting, and hope to do a good book on it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Wherever one goes the best men one meets are Hoover's disciples from
      Belgium. They tell extraordinary stories of the heroism of the patriots
      whom they knew there&mdash;people by the score who duplicated Miss Cavell's
      courage and paid the penalty. Their experience of Hun brutality has
      somehow dulled their sense of horror&mdash;they speak of it as something
      quite commonplace and to be expected.
    </p>
    <p>
      On Friday I saw Miss Holt's work for the blind. She bears out for
      France all that I have said about the amazing sharing of the wounded in
      England. One man in her care was not only totally blind, but he had also
      lost both arms. In the hospital there were men less grievously mutilated
      than himself, who hardly knew how to endure their loss. For the sake of
      the cheeriness of his example, he used to go round the ward with gifts of
      cigarettes, which he almost thought he lit for the men himself, for he
      used to say to Miss Holt before undertaking such a journey, &ldquo;You are
      my hands.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      We, in England, and still less in America, have never approached the
      loathing which is felt for the Boche in France. Men spit as they utter his
      name, as though the very word was foul in the mouth. Wherever you go
      lonely men or women are pointed out to you; all of his or her family are
      behind the German lines. We think we have suffered, but we have not
      sounded one fathom of this depth of agony. On every hand I hear that the
      French Army is stronger than ever, better equipped and more firm in its <i>moral</i>.
      As an impassioned Frenchman said to me yesterday, his eyes blazing as he
      banged the table, &ldquo;They shall not pass. I say so&mdash;and I am
      France.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      In the face of all this I do not wonder that the French misunderstand the
      easy good-humour with which we English go out to die. In their eyes and
      with the throbbing of their wounds, this war is a matter for neither
      good-humour nor sportsmanship, but only for the indignant, inarticulate
      wrath of a Hebrew god. If every weapon was taken from their hands and all
      the young men were gone, with clenched fists those who were left would
      smite and smite to the last. It is fitting that they should feel this way,
      but I'm glad that our English boys can still laugh while they die.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now I'm going out on the Boulevards to get lunch.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      Paris
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>January</i> 30, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>esterday on my
      return to Paris I found all your letters awaiting me&mdash;a real big pile
      which took me over an hour to read. The latest was written on New Year's
      Day in the throes of coal shortage and intense cold. Really it seems
      absurd that you should be starved for warmth in America. Last week I was
      within eighteen kilometres of the Front line staying in a hotel as
      luxurious as the Astor, with plenty of heat and a hot bath at midnight in
      a private bathroom. All the appointments and comforts were perfect;
      booming through the night came the perpetual muttering of the guns. There
      were troops of all kinds marching up for an attack; the villages were
      packed, but there was no disorganization.
    </p>
    <p>
      Well, I've had a great trip this last time. I went to see refugee
      work&mdash;and saw it. There were barracks full of babies&mdash;the
      youngest only six days' old. There were very many children who have
      been re-captured from the Huns.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-morrow I start off for the borders of Switzerland to see the
      repatriated French civilians arrive. Then I go with the head of the Red
      Cross for a tour to see the reconstruction work in the devastated
      districts. When that is finished, I return to London to put my book
      together. I hope to get back to my battery about the end of March.
    </p>
    <p>
      What a time I have had. A year ago it would have seemed impossible. I've
      motored, gone by speeders and trains to all kinds of quiet and ancient
      places which it would never have entered my head to visit in peace times.
      The American soldier is everywhere, striking a strange note of modernity
      and contrast. He sits on fences through the country-side, swinging his
      legs and smoking Bull Durham, when he isn't charging a swinging sack
      with a bayonet. He is the particular pal of all the French children.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm now due for a day of interviews and shall have to ring off. I
      rose at seven this morning so as to write this letter. At the moment I'm
      sitting in a deep arm-chair, with an electric lamp at my elbow. It's
      an awful war! In less than two months I'll be sitting in clothes
      that I haven't taken off for a fortnight&mdash;the mud will be my
      couch and the flash of the guns my reading lamp. It's funny, but up
      there in the discomfort I shall be ten times more happy.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      Paris
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>February</i> 13, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve not
      heard from you for two weeks&mdash;which is no fault of yours. There was a
      delay in getting passports&mdash;so I'm only just back from the
      devastated districts and get on board the train for London to-night. It's
      exactly six weeks today since I left England on this adventure.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've done a good many things since last I wrote you. Did I tell you
      that among others I visited Miss Holt's work for the blind? I can
      think of nothing which does more to call out one's sympathy than to
      sit among those sightless eyes. I have talked about courage, but these men
      leave me appalled and silent. They are covered with decorations&mdash;the
      Legion d'.onneur, etc. They all have their stories. One, after he
      had been wounded and while there was still a chance of saving his sight,
      insisted on being taken to his General that he might give information
      about a German mine. When his mission was completed his chance of ever
      seeing again was ended.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the way back I saw Joffre walking. I now know why they call him Papa
      Joffre. He is huge, ungainly, and white and kind. Somehow he made me think
      of a puppy&mdash;he had such an air of surprise. There was a premature
      touch of spring in the tree-tops. The grand old man of France was aware of
      it&mdash;he looked as though it were his first spring, so young in an
      ancient sort of way. He was stopping all the time to watch the sparrows
      flying and the shrubs growing misty with greenness. For all his braid and
      decorations he looked like an amiable boy of splendid size.
    </p>
    <p>
      And then I went to Amiens. When I was in the line, it was always my dream
      to get there. Our senior officers used to play hooky in Amiens and come
      back with wonderful tales of sheeted beds and perpetual baths. I got there
      toward evening and was met by a British Staff officer with a car. After
      dinner I escaped him and wandered through the crooked streets,
      encountering everywhere my dearly beloved British Tommy, straight out of
      the trenches for a few hours' respite. As I passed estaminets I
      could hear concertinas being played and voices singing. It was London and
      heroism and home-sickness all muddled up together that these voices sang.
      And they sang just one song. It is the first song I heard in France, when
      the war was very much younger. When the war is ended, I expect it will be
      the last. If the war goes on for another thirty years, our Tommies will be
      singing it&mdash;wheezing it out on concertinas and mouth-organs, in rain
      and sunshine, on the line of march, on leave or in their cramped billets.
      Invincible optimists that they are&mdash;so ordinary, so extraordinary, so
      good-humoured and mild! I peered in through the estaminets' windows
      of Amiens&mdash;there they sat with their equipment off, their elbows on
      the table and their small beer before them. And here's what they
      sang, as so many who are dead have sung before them:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;Après la guerre fini
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Tous les soldats parti,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Mademoiselle 'ave a souvenir&mdash;
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Après la guerre fini.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      After all my wandering along French and American fronts, I was back among
      my own people.
    </p>
    <p>
      My final night in Amiens was equally typical. I went to the officers'
      club and found a sing-song in progress. There was a cavalry major there
      who had been in the show at Cambrai. He was evidently a hunting-man, for
      he kept on getting off his hunting calls whenever things threatened to
      become dull. Most of the music was rag-time, which offended him very much.
      &ldquo;Let's sing something English,&rdquo; he kept on saying. So we
      gave him &ldquo;John Peel,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hearts of Oak,&rdquo; &ldquo;Drink
      to me only with thine Eyes&rdquo;&mdash;and he went to bed happy.
    </p>
    <p>
      I had a good fast car, so using Amiens as our base we struck into the
      Aisne, Oise, and Somme, covering a good many kilometres a day. In these
      districts the Huns were masters a year ago&mdash;and now we are ploughing.
      The enemy withdrew from these districts last March. Nearly all the
      demolition is wilful, and very little of it is due to shell-fire. In town
      after town scarcely a house is left standing&mdash;everything is gutted.
      The American Red Cross is trying to do something to alleviate this
      distress. It was in a ruined château I found the Smith College Unit and,
      much to my surprise, Miss W. from Newark, who had just received a letter
      from M. She was wanting to go to Amiens, so we put her in the car and took
      her back with us.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm longing to get to England to read all your letters. I feel quite
      out of touch. To-morrow I shall be in London.
    </p>
    <p>
      I was in Paris when the Huns were overhead, and saw one of them come down.
      The calmness of the people was amazing. There was no dashing for the Métro
      or other funk holes; only a contemptuous cheeriness. The French are great.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXX
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>February</i> 18, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-day I have made
      a start on my book Out to Win, and miss you very much. It's quite a
      difficult thing, I find, to really concentrate on literary work in a
      strange environment. I wish I could take a magic powder and find myself
      back in my own little study, with my own little family, till the book is
      written.
    </p>
    <p>
      Heaps of people I met in France were returning to America, and promised to
      telephone you to say they had seen me.
    </p>
    <p>
      I stumbled across a most inspiring conversation which I overheard the
      other day, and which, if I had time, I would work into a story, entitled
      &ldquo;His Bit.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      I was sitting in front of two women on a bus.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said one, &ldquo;when they told me that Phil was
      married, you could 'ave knocked me darn wiv a feather.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      It transpired that Phil was a C3 class man, no good for active service. He
      had met a girl, turned out into the streets by her parents because she was
      about to have a child by a soldier now dead, whom she had not married.
      Phil, without asking her any questions, did his &ldquo;bit&rdquo;&mdash;led
      her off and married her right away because he was sorry for her.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;And she ain't a wicked girl,&rdquo; said one of the good
      ladies on the bus. &ldquo;She didn't mean no harm. She was just
      soft-like to a Tommy on leave, I expect. It was 'ard lines on
      'er. But that Phil&mdash;my goodness, he'll make 'er a
      good 'usband. Is the child born? I should just fink so. 'E's
      that proud, she might be 'is own dawter. 'E carries 'er
      raund all over the plaice, Lord bless yer. And 'is wife's
      people, they can't make too much of 'im. No, 'e's
      not strong&mdash;a C 3 man. I thought I told yer. She 'as ter work
      to 'elp 'im along. But between 'em&mdash;&mdash;There! I'm
      'ats h'orf to Phil. They're a bloomin' pair of
      love-birds.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      I like to think of Phil, don't you? I like to know that chaps like
      him are in the world. He couldn't fight the Germans; but he could
      play the man by a dead soldier.
    </p>
    <p>
      That's a little bit of real life to help you along. Now I'm
      going to knock off and rest.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXI
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>February</i> 24, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m not
      spending much time on letter-writing just at present. From morning till
      night, just as I did when I was writing <i>The Glory of the Trenches</i>,
      I shove away at my new book. I am most anxious to get it creditably
      finished and soon. The weather is getting quite ripping for the Front and
      I'm keen to be back in time for the spring offensive.
    </p>
    <p>
      You'll be pleased to know that, under my encouragement, your
      youngest son has broken out into literature. He did it while I was away in
      France. And the result is extraordinarily fine. He's managed to
      fling the spirit of his job on paper&mdash;it lives and gets you. When
      they are asked at the end of a patrol what they have been doing, they
      answer, &ldquo;Pushing Water&rdquo;&mdash;so that he's made that
      answer his title.
    </p>
    <p>
      When I took the manuscript to W., he said: &ldquo;But haven't you
      another brother? What's he doing? Where's his manuscript? And
      what about your mother and sister in America, and your sister in Holland?
      Don't tell me that they're not all writing?&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      At that moment I felt a deep sympathy for Solomon, who I'm sure must
      have been a publisher. Only a publisher would say so tiredly: &ldquo;Of
      making many books there is no end.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      On Tuesday another beastly birthday is due me&mdash;but I shan't say
      anything about it. I shall commence my new lease of life with a meat-card
      in my hand and no prospect of being really fully fed till I get back to
      France. For the first time England is feeling a genuine shortage. She isn't
      particularly annoyed at being rationed, but the worry you have over
      finding out how much you are allowed to eat and where and when, causes
      people a good deal of trouble. My own impression is that there is plenty
      of food in England at present, but that we want to conserve it in order to
      be able to lend America our tonnage.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>March</i> 31, 1919
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>elow my window, as
      I write, I can hear the stirring of the Strand. Newsboys are calling the
      latest papers, motor-horns hoot, and the million feet of London, each pair
      with their own separate story, clatter against the pavement. What a world!
      How do we ever get tired of living! Every day there are new faces,
      bringing new affections and adventure, new demands for tenderness and
      strength. These footsteps will go on. They will never grow quiet. A
      thousand years hence they will clatter along these pavements through the
      miracle of re-creation. Why do we talk of death and old age? It is not
      true that we terminate. Even in this world the river in whose movement we
      have our part still goes on&mdash;the river of opinions, of effort, of
      habitation. The sound of us dies faint up the road to the listener who
      stands stationary; but the fact that at last he ceases to hear us does not
      mean that we have ceased to exist&mdash;only that we have gone farther.
      How arbitrary we are in our petty prejudices against immortality! God
      hears more distinctly the travellers to whom men have ceased to listen.
      Nothing to me is more certain than that we go on and on, drawing nearer to
      the source of our creation through the ages. Just as I came home to you
      after so many risks, such suffering, elation, bloodshed, so through the
      unthinkable adventure of time we journey home to our Maker. Going out of
      sight is sad, as are all partings. But I can bear to part now in a way
      that I could not before I saw the heavens open in the horror of war. I
      have ceased to be afraid of the unguess-able, and better still, I have
      lost my desire to guess. Not to stand still&mdash;to press onwards like
      soldiers&mdash;that is all that is required of us. I have heard men talk
      about world-sorrows, but if you trace them back, our sorrows are all for
      ourselves&mdash;they are a personal equation. To develop one's
      personality in the remembering of others seems to me to be the only road
      to happiness. All this talk&mdash;why? Because of the footsteps beneath my
      window!
    </p>
    <p>
      The leave train has just arrived at Charing Cross from France. It steamed
      across the Thames with the men singing &ldquo;The Land where the Bluebells
      grow.&rdquo; There was laughter and longing in their singing.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      Bath
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>March</i> 24, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am with Mr.
      Lane, spending the weekend. It's a wonderful spring Sunday&mdash;no
      hint of war or anything but flowers and sunshine. An hour ago I halted
      outside the newspaper office and read the latest telegrams of the great
      German offensive. It seemed like the autumn of 1914, reading of death and
      not being a part of it. They'll not take very long in letting me get
      back to my battery now. One's curiously egotistic&mdash;I feel, if
      only I were out there, that with my little bit of extra help everything
      would go well.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yesterday we went to Batheaston Manor, a fine old Jacobean house, to tea&mdash;the
      kind of house that one has dreamt of possessing. There were high elms with
      rooks cawing and green lawns with immaculately gravelled paths. Inside
      there were broken landings and rooms with little stairs descending, and
      panelling, and pictures&mdash;everything for which one used to care. The
      late Belgian Minister to England, Count de la Laing, was there&mdash;a
      sad, courteous man. As we walked back with him to Bath along the canal, he
      remarked casually that all the art treasures in his château outside of
      Brussels had been shipped to Germany.
    </p>
    <p>
      We spent the afternoon seeing the King's pictures&mdash;mostly
      Gainsboroughs&mdash;which have been brought to Bath from Buckingham
      Palace. From here we went to tea with an old lady, Miss Tanner, who rode
      on her lonesome through Persia many years ago and consequently has gained
      a Lady Hester Stanhope reputation and, what is more important, a splendid
      selection of Eastern rugs and silverwork. After that we walked home by way
      of the great crescent which forms the scene in <i>The School for Scandal</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      An odd day to dodge in between experiences of European war! I have to
      pinch myself awake to remember what is happening at this moment in the
      Front-line trenches. Probably within a few weeks I shall be there&mdash;and
      feeling very much more contented with myself than I do now.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>March</i> 31, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ric is with me. I
      am very glad to have him for my last days in England, and I do hope that
      Reggie may get here in time to see me. He's ordered south in two
      weeks' time, but I may be in France by then. I report at Canadian
      Headquarters to-morrow, and will probably be sent straight down to camp,
      and from there to France within two weeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      Have you seen General Currie's stirring message to the Canadians,
      saying that he expects them to die to a man if, by so doing, they can push
      the Huns back? This summer will see the biggest of all the battles. I'm
      wildly excited and longing to get back. There'll be some of the old
      glamour about this new fighting&mdash;it's all in the open. We've
      got away from trench warfare at last. The beasts are all over the country
      which we fought for and have recaptured since 1916. They've
      destroyed for a second time all the reconstruction work that I saw in the
      devastated areas. I'm wondering if all the girls got out in time.
      There were so many American girls there.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't you dear people get down in the mouth when I'm again at
      the Front. It's where I've wanted to be for a great many
      months&mdash;ever since I recovered. To be able to go back now, when there's
      really something doing, is very fitting. I should have been wasting my
      time, perhaps, during the inactivity of the winter, if I'd been
      sitting in dug-outs when I might have been writing <i>Out to Win</i>. But
      no man, whatever his capacities, is wasting his time in fighting at this
      hour of crisis. I've been made ashamed by the excuses I've
      heard put up for various quitters who have taken bomb-proof jobs. I'm
      in terror lest I should be confused with such. Heaven knows, I'm no
      fonder of killing or of being killed than anyone else, but there are times
      when everything decent responds to the demand of duty. I shall absolutely
      be immensely happy to be a man again, taking my chances. I know that you
      will be glad for me. If you hadn't known for certain that I was
      going back, you'd have been making excuses for me in your hearts
      during these last five months. So smile and be proud. And whatever
      happens, go on being proud and smiling. Your job is to set an example.
      That's your contribution towards winning the war.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's past midnight, and I go to camp to-morrow. I'll let you
      have a cable when I go to the Front&mdash;so you needn't be nervous.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXV
    </h3>
    <p>
      In Camp. England <i>April</i> 4, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> got down here
      last night and reported back this morning. I found the General of my
      Division had already applied for me, so I am going back to my old Brigade
      at the beginning of this week&mdash;on the Sunday, I think. To-day is
      Wednesday, so I haven't lost much time in getting into action.
      Probably I shall go up to London to-morrow for a two days' leave and
      meet Eric.
    </p>
    <p>
      There's just a chance that Reggie may be with us as well, for I've
      sent him a telegram to say that I'm going to France.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now, as you may imagine, I am at last happy and self-respecting. I'm
      going to be a part of the game again and not a pretence-soldier. What's
      more, I'm going to go straight into a real battle&mdash;the biggest
      of the war. It's really splendid and I feel childishly elated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Well, I've had a run for my money if any man ever had. The good
      times in England, France, and America will be worth remembering when I'm
      again in the fighting. I contrast in my mind my present mood with that of
      the first time when I went out&mdash;I was very much afraid then; now I'm
      extraordinarily happy. I've learnt to appreciate the privilege of
      being in the glory and the heroism. I'm more pleased than if I had
      won a decoration, that my Colonel should have asked for my return at the
      first possible moment. It proves to me something which one often doubts&mdash;that
      I really am some good out there.
    </p>
    <p>
      Keep your tails up, my dear ones, and don't get worried. This line
      is only to let you know the good news.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>April</i> 6, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m the
      happiest person in London to-day at the thought of my return. This is
      quite unreasonable, when I sit down to calculate the certain discomfort
      and danger. I can't explain it, unless it is that only by being at
      the Front can I feel that I am living honourably. I've been
      self-contemptuous every minute that I've been out of the line. I
      began to doubt myself and to wonder whether all my protestations of
      wanting to get back, were not a camouflage for cowardice. I can prove to
      myself that they weren't now. &ldquo;The Canadians will advance or
      die to a man,&rdquo; were the words that General Currie sent to his
      troops. Isn't it magnificent to be included in such a chivalrous
      adventure? I don't think you'll read about the Canadians
      retiring.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whatever happens I've had a grand romance out of life&mdash;there's
      nothing of which to complain. I owe destiny no grudge. The world has been
      kind. I don't think I shall get killed; I never have thought that.
      But if I am, it will be as fine an ending to a full day's work as
      heart could desire.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think I'm younger than I ever was. I no longer know satiety. The
      job in front of me fills all my soul and mind. I'm going to prove to
      myself and others that my books are not mere heroic sentiment. Going out a
      second time, despite the chances to hang back, will give a sincerity to
      what I've been trying to say to America. Heaps of people would think
      it brutal to want so much to go where men are being slaughtered&mdash;but
      it isn't the slaughtering that attracts, it's the winning of
      the ideal that calls me.
    </p>
    <p>
      C. has command of my battery now. He's a fine chap. You remember how
      he left London before his leave was up, &ldquo;because he wanted to be
      among men.&rdquo; That's the sort he is, and I admire him.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>April</i> 14, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e're sitting
      together in the little flat at Battersea, and Reggie is with us. It's
      Sunday afternoon. To-morrow morning early I set out for France. The little
      party wanted me to sleep here to-night so that they could get up about 6
      a.m. and see me off. I wouldn't have that. So we're going to
      say good-bye comfortably to-night and the boys will sleep with me at a
      hotel just outside the station.
    </p>
    <p>
      You can't guess how glad I am at the thought of going back. I was
      afraid I should never be a fighting man again. Now that I'm once
      more to be allowed to do my bit I feel extraordinarily grateful. I have
      the silly feeling that just one more man might make all the difference at
      such a crisis, and I'm jealous lest, when so many are being called
      upon for an exaggerated display of heroism, I should lose my chance. I
      know now why soldiers sing when they go out to war&mdash;they're so
      proud that they have been chosen for the sacrifice.
    </p>
    <p>
      The boys came down to camp with me and lived near to the camp. I took an
      anti-gas defence course before re-joining in France. Friday night we came
      up to town and we've had a very jolly time.
    </p>
    <p>
      Well, dears, we've lived a happy crowded life since I was wounded,
      and we've each one of us learnt more about the glory of this
      undertaking.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 21, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve been
      back at the Front six days. This is the first opportunity I have had to
      write. I left England last Monday, having spent Saturday and Sunday in
      London with the boys. Major H. came up to give me a send-off and we had a
      very gay time. Saturday evening, after dinner and a theatre, we returned
      to Battersea and all found beds in one or other of the flats. On Sunday
      evening we slept at a hotel next to the station so that I might be sure of
      catching the early morning train. We managed to get a room with three beds
      in it, and so kept all together as in the old days. By 5 a.m. we were up
      and stirring. P. and L. walked in on us as we were having breakfast, and
      S. met us on the platform. They all seemed quite assured that they would
      never, never see me again&mdash;which makes me smile. I suppose they all
      had visions of grey waves of Germans deluging our infantry by force of
      numbers, while the gunners were left far in front, trying to stem the
      tide. That is what we all hope for. It's the kind of chance we dream
      about; but it hasn't happened yet.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monday afternoon I was in France and slept at the Base that night. Early
      Tuesday morning I was on the move again, passing Red Cross trains packed
      with wounded and trucks crammed with ordnance. I couldn't help
      comparing this return to the Front with my first trip up. We had a good
      time playing cards and recalling the old fights&mdash;we were like
      schoolboys coming back for the holidays. There wasn't one of us who
      wasn't wildly excited at the thought of being a part of the game
      again. This was rather strange, if you come to consider it, for each of us
      had been wounded at least once and knew the worst of what war could do to
      us&mdash;yet fear was the emotion most remote from us. We were simply and
      sheerly glad to be going into the thick of it; our great fear had been
      that our fighting days were ended.
    </p>
    <p>
      By 2 p.m. we were dumped out at a town through which I used to ride last
      summer. Here we had to report to the Provost Marshal for further transport
      orders. He told me that I should have to go to the Corps Reinforcement
      Camp. I didn't intend to do that, so waited till he was engaged on
      the phone and then made my escape. Taking the baggage I could carry, I
      beat my way back to my old battery on foot and in lorries. I was just
      coming into the wagonlines when I met Major C., who now commands us. I
      think he had been lonely for some of the old faces; he went wild with
      delight. I had a magnificent welcome back. On the spur of the moment he
      made me a present of his own charger and took me up to the guns with him,
      where we arrived in time for a very late tea, within thirty-six hours of
      my leaving England.
    </p>
    <p>
      The day after that I went forward to do my 24-hour spell at the observing
      station. When I saw my first Hun after so long an absence, I felt more
      like hugging him than trying to kill him. Of course I had to do the
      latter, and had a very nice little strafe. I wrote you a fine long letter
      up there and somehow lost it. So this is my second attempt.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't get nervous about me. Everything is quite all right with us
      and I'm having a real holiday after my feverish literary spasms. But
      a lot of familiar faces are absent.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XXXIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 22, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou would hardly
      believe our peaceful state of mind unless you could drop in on us for an
      hour. You, in America, are evidently very worked up about us, and picture
      us as in desperate conditions. Don't worry, we've got our
      tails up and are happy as sand-boys. There's nothing of the grimly
      set faces about our attitude such as you imagine. We're too
      confident to be grim; war is actually, from our point of view, a gigantic
      lark. It must sound silly to you, I know, but I love to hear the screaming
      of the shells in the darkness and the baying of the guns. It's like
      a pack of wolves being chased through the night by bloodhounds.
    </p>
    <p>
      I hadn't been back two days before they got the rumour at the
      wagon-lines that I was wounded&mdash;a little previous, I thought it. I
      call that wishing a blighty on me.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've just come back from a trip across one of our old battlefields.
      We're in the Hun support-trenches, behind us is his Front line, then
      No Man's Land with its craters and graves, and behind that the Front
      line from which we jumped off. You can trace everything plainly and follow
      the entire attack by the broken wire and blown-in dug-outs. We're
      still filled with amused contempt for the Hun on our part of the Front.
    </p>
    <p>
      We were discussing chaplains the other day&mdash;the way some of them have
      failed us in this war. One of the officers told a story of Grannie M., one
      of our First Division majors. A chaplain, who never went farther than the
      wagon-lines, was always saying how much he'd like to see the Front.
      Grannie called his bluff and took him for a trip into one of the warmest
      spots. The chaplain kept dodging and crouching every time a shell fell
      within a hundred yards. Each time Grannie, standing quietly silent, waited
      for him to get up and renew the journey. At last the chaplain flopped into
      a shell-hole and refused to come out. Grannie, who is a big man and well
      over six foot, grinned down at him despisingly. &ldquo;Priest,&rdquo; he
      said, &ldquo;if I thought I had half the pull with Christ that you say you
      have, not all the shells in France would make me lie as flat as that.&rdquo;
      Later another chaplain came to that brigade. No one would give him
      house-room. He went off and slept where he could; he never came near the
      officers, but he haunted the men at the forward guns. When the brigade
      moved out to another sector, he procured an old skate of a horse and
      trailed along at the rear of the line of march like a hungry dog. The new
      Front proved to be a warm one; there were many casualties, but the
      chaplain was always on his job, especially when the shells were falling.
      From somewhere he got the money to start a canteen for the men, which he
      ran himself. When no one else had cigarettes, he could supply them. At
      last even the officers had to come to him. He finished up by being the
      most popular chaplain the brigade had ever had, honoured by everyone from
      the colonel down. There are your two types of army chaplains: the one who
      plays the game, the other who issues season tickets to heaven, but is
      afraid of travelling on them himself.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XL
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 26, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> It is now over a
      week since I have been back with my battery, and it seems as though all
      that trip along the American line and the rush back to New York had never
      happened. I'm sitting in a little &ldquo;house&rdquo; in a deep
      chalk trench. The house is made of half-circles of corrugated iron; there's
      an anti-gas blanket hanging at one end and at the other a window made of
      oiled calico. Up one corner are the maps, scales, and office papers;
      pinned on boards is a four-foot map of the entire English front. My
      sleeping bag is stretched on an old French spring mattress, which was
      brought here some time ago by the Huns. From the walls hang a
      higgledy-piggledy of trench coats, breeches, tunics. This is the place in
      which we work out our ranges, play cards, have our meals, and rest when we're
      back from doing forward work.
    </p>
    <p>
      You can walk for miles where we are without ever being seen, if you follow
      the various systems of Hun and British trenches, for we're plumb in
      the heart of an old battlefield. The only landmarks left to guide one are
      the craters as big as churches&mdash;records of mines that have been
      sprung&mdash;and little rows of lonely graves. At night when the moon is
      up, this country creates the curious ghostly illusion of being an endless
      alkali desert, beaten into billows by the wind. The shells go shrieking
      over it and wreaths of mist wander here and there like phantoms.
      Destruction can create a terrible pretence and caricature of beauty. I
      wish you might visit such a place just once so as to get an idea of where
      our lives are spent.
    </p>
    <p>
      Your letters apropos of the latest German offensive bring home to me very
      vividly the emotional terror which war excites in the minds of civilians.
      You picture us as standing with our backs to the wall, desperately pushing
      death from off our breasts with naked hands. The truth is so immensely
      different. We're having a thoroughly bang-up time, and we're
      as amused by the Hun as ever. He may force us to fall back; but while we
      fall back we laugh at him. That is the attitude of every British soldier
      that I've met. We're as happy and unconcerned as children.
      There's one chap here who's typical of this spirit of treating
      war as an immensely sporting event. He's the raiding officer of a
      certain battalion, and is known as &ldquo;Battling Brown&rdquo;&mdash;though
      Brown is not his real name. He has a little company of his own, consisting
      of seventy men. He's been in over a hundred raids on the Hun Front
      line and has only had two of his men killed in a year. A short while ago
      he went across with his raiders and captured three Germans; on the return
      journey across No Man's Land something happened, and he lined up his
      prisoners and shot them. He led his men safely back to our lines and then
      set out again alone on a private excursion into the Boche territory. By
      dawn he once more returned, bringing back four prisoners single-handed.
      You might picture such a man as a kind of Hercules, but he isn't. He's
      thin, and tall, and fair, and high strung. His age, I should guess, is
      about twenty-two.
    </p>
    <p>
      Far away in the distance I can hear the pipers playing. It always makes me
      think of Loch Lomond and when we were little tads. How green and quiet and
      cool those days seem now&mdash;the long rides across the moors and down
      the glens, the bathing in little mountain streams, the walks in the sad
      twilights. There are so many happy memories I have to thank you for. You
      were very wise and generous in the way you planned my childhood. I'm
      less than a fortnight back at the Front, but I'm already falling
      into the old habit of happy retrospect. We don't live here really.
      Our souls are in France only for brief and glorious and intense intervals&mdash;during
      the moments of attack and repulse. The rest of the time we're away
      in the green valleys of remembered places, watching the ghosts who are the
      shadows of what we were.
    </p>
    <p>
      My groom is a boy named Gilpin. The name has proved his downfall. He
      galloped my horse on the hard road the other day, which is forbidden. A
      colonel caught him going full tilt, stopped him and took his name. When
      the severities seemed ended this innocent young party asked the colonel to
      hold his horse while he mounted&mdash;so now he's up on an extra
      charge of insolence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Army discipline is in many ways silly and old maidish. Here's a chap
      who's faithful, well conducted, and honest. He's likely to get
      a heavier punishment for asking a superior officer to hold his horse than
      if he'd been drunk and uproarious.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>April</i> 28, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's funny to
      recall the different graveyards among the shell-holes that I've
      learnt to call home. Once life was so definitely focused&mdash;much too
      definitely for my patience. It seemed as though I was rooted and planted
      for all eternity. It never seemed to me then that I should ever find the
      sacrificial opportunity or be stirred to any prophetic exaltations. It's
      wonderful the way the angel of Death, as discovered in war, can give one
      visions of limitless nobilities, each one of which is attainable and
      accessible.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm by myself at the Battery. It's late afternoon, and a
      thunderstorm is brewing. The room is dark (I mean the dug-out); I feel as
      though it were November instead of April. What a queer life this is. In
      one way I have not had so much idleness since I was in hospital&mdash;then
      comes a burst of physical strenuosity out of all proportion to one's
      strength. Things happen by fits and starts; you never know what is going
      to happen next.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's intensely still. The stillness is made more noticeable by the
      booming of an occasional gun.
    </p>
    <p>
      The whole hope and talk of our chaps is the Americans&mdash;what they're
      going to do, when they're going to start doing it, and what kind of
      a <i>moral</i> they will have. I hear the wildest rumours of the numbers
      they have in France&mdash;rumours which I know to be untrue since my tour
      along the American lines. You will have read the manuscript of <i>Out to
      Win</i> long before this letter reaches you. I wonder what you all think
      of it and whether you like it. It was written in a breathless, racing sort
      of fashion. I sat at it from morning till last thing at night. All my
      desire was to do my duty as regards the Americans and then to get out here
      before the big show started. I managed things just in time. I don't
      remember much of what I wrote&mdash;only a picture of Domremy and another
      of Evian and Nancy. I hope it was as good as you expected.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are things one lives through and sees now which seem ordinary but
      which to future ages will figure as stupendous. If one can record them now
      in just that spirit of ordinariness which constitutes their real wonder,
      they will together give an accurate portrait of Armageddon. My nine months
      out of the line began to give me a little perspective&mdash;I began to see
      the awful marvellousness of some of the scenes that I had lived through.
      Now, like the mist which I see hanging above the Hun Front line, a curtain
      of normality is blotting out the sharp abnormal edges of my landscape.
    </p>
    <p>
      This war, at the distance which removes you from it, must seem a filthy
      and brutal kind of game. It is all of that. But it's more than that.
      The game was not of our inventing&mdash;it was thrust on us. We are not
      responsible for the game; but we are responsible for the spirit in which
      we play it. The fine, clear, visionary attitude of our chaps redeems for
      us the horror and pathos of the undertaking.
    </p>
    <p>
      It will be towards the end of May when this arrives and you'll be
      off to the lakes and the mountains. I wonder where. I suppose we'll
      still be plugging along, sending death over into Fritz's lines and
      receiving it back.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 2, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am up
      forward again on my shift. I'm sitting in a hole sunk beneath the
      level of the ground, with a slit that just peeps out across the dandelions
      to the Hun Front line. From here I can catch any movement in the enemy
      back-country without being seen myself. Below my O.P. there is a deep
      dug-out to which I can retire in the event of enemy shelling; if one exit
      gets blown in, there's a second from which I can make good my
      escape. On each fresh trip to this place I find a new gem of literature
      left behind by one or other of the telephonists. Last time it was a
      priceless kitchen masterpiece by Charles Garvice, entitled <i>The
      Triumphant Lover</i>; this time it's an exceedingly purple effort by
      Victoria Cross, entitled <i>Five Nights</i>. So you see I do not allow my
      interest in matters intellectual to rust.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are many things of interest that I should like to tell you, but the
      consciousness that the censor is for ever at my elbow prevents. Did I ever
      tell you the story of the censor whom I met on the train from Boulogne,
      when I was returning to the line in January 1917? If I happened to tell it
      to you, the gentleman who uninvited shares all my letters with you hasn't
      heard it, and I'm sure his curiosity must be pricked by this time&mdash;so
      here goes.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was after that splendid leave in London which you came over from
      America to share with me. The train from Boulogne to the Front was the
      usual draughty affair, half the windows out, no heating system, no means
      of getting anything to eat for goodness knows how many hours. I picked out
      the least disreputable carriage and found that a gunner colonel was
      snuggled up in one corner and a pile of rugs, pillows, hot-water bottles,
      eatables, etc., in another. Just as the train was starting the owner of
      all these effeminate luxuries hopped in and commenced to make himself
      comfortable. He was nearer fifty than forty. His nose was inflamed and
      heavily veined, either from drink, dyspepsia, or both. His rank was that
      of a lieutenant. His social grade that of a post-office assistant, I
      should fancy. His uniform fitted abominably, and his appearance was as
      unsoldierly as can well be imagined. He looked like a loose-living spider.
    </p>
    <p>
      We hadn't been moving very long when he started to unwrap his
      packages and to gorge himself. He ate steadily like one whose life
      depended on it. The colonel and I had forgotten to bring anything, so we
      had the joy of watching.
    </p>
    <p>
      In our chilly misery we became human and began to talk. The conversation
      became reminiscent of the numerous offensives. The sloppy lieutenant with
      the drooping walrus moustaches who sat opposite to us, persistently laid
      claim to a more thorough knowledge of attacks that we had been in than we
      did ourselves. He puzzled us; we couldn't picture him as a
      combatant. Quite haphazard one of us&mdash;I think it was the colonel&mdash;commenced
      to damn censors as chaps who sat safely behind the lines and spied on
      fighting-men's private affairs. The lieutenant became very hot in
      the censors' defence. He tried to prove the necessity for them by
      quoting the case of a lieutenant named N., who had sent back captured
      aeroplane photos to his friends. I happened to know N. and that he was
      going to be tried by court-martial for his indiscretion, so grew loud in
      proclaiming my contempt for the fellow safely behind the lines who had
      caught him. We were particularly annoyed, because N. was a plucky soldier.
    </p>
    <p>
      Our friend in the corner took my remarks extremely personally. To show his
      resentment of me, he pointedly offered the colonel some of his fodder. At
      last he said very haughtily, &ldquo;It may interest you to know that I am
      the censor and am at present going up the line to give evidence against
      Lieutenant N. at his trial.&rdquo; Just at that moment the train stopped
      at a station. He blinked through the window with his shortsighted eyes,
      trying to read the name &ldquo;This is M., I think,&rdquo; he said;
      &ldquo;if it is, we stop here ten minutes and get time to stretch our
      legs.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      I looked out of the window helpfully. &ldquo;It is M.,&rdquo; I told him.
      It wasn't. He got out and commenced to walk up the platform. Almost
      immediately the train started to pull out. He made a wild crab-wise dash
      for the carriage-door, but the colonel and I were hanging to it on the
      inside. When we were safely on our journey, we shared up his pillows,
      rugs, hot-water bottles, and eatables between us, and had a comparatively
      pleasant journey. For once we thanked God for the censor.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's tea-time at home. You've probably come in from a walk and
      are smoking a cigar at the family oak-table. I wish I could pop in on you.
    </p>
    <p>
      Oh, our latest excitement! We received our new gramophone last night with
      about thirty of the latest records!
    </p>
    <p>
      You'll be glad to know that I now have my old batman back. He's
      the man who took me out when I was wounded and was so tender to me on the
      way to the hospital. That memory of his tenderness is rather embarrassing,
      for I can't bring myself to strafe him the way I ought to. I can
      always see the fellow's concern when he thought that I was done for.
      Now that he's got me back he acts as though I were still a very weak
      and indiscreet person who had to be coaxed and managed. I have the feeling
      in his presence of being perpetually in pyjamas and in bed. He has the
      advantage of me, to put it in a nutshell.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 3, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t's early
      morning. I'm still sitting in the little dug-out with the slit that
      looks towards the Hun Front line. Everything but the immediate foreground
      is blanketed in heavy mist at present. I can hear bombing going on
      somewhere&mdash;but I can also hear a lark singing near to the sun, high
      overhead. The clumps of dandelions are still sleeping. They haven't
      opened&mdash;they're green instead of yellow. The grass sparkles
      with little drops of dew, more beautiful than the most costly diamonds.
      With the first of the dawn I read a story by Tolstoy; since then I've
      been sitting thinking&mdash;thinking of you and of the sleeping house in
      Newark, which will soon be disturbed by your bath-water running, if you
      still rise early; and thinking how strange it is that I should be here in
      the greatest war in history. We planned to do such different things with
      our lives. My first dream was to become extremely wise. At Oxford there
      seemed no limit to the amount of knowledge I could acquire; it seemed only
      a matter of patience and perseverance. Then that dream went, and I wanted
      to save the world. I'm afraid one has to be a little aristocratic
      towards the world before he can conceive of himself as capable of saving
      it or of the world as requiring saving. The aristocratic touch grew on me
      and I decided to do my saving not by touching people, but by writing
      poetry for the few who would understand. It wasn't half such good
      poetry as I thought it was at the time, and it never could have re-made
      anything. Disappointed in that and because I had now committed myself to a
      literary way of life, I took to writing novels, which nobody wanted to
      publish, read, or buy. Then, because I had to live somehow, I entered into
      the commercial end of publishing. There was always the shadow of a dream
      which I pursued even then in my spare hours; it was the dream that saved
      me and led me on to write <i>The Garden Without Walls</i>. But the shadow
      was growing fainter when this war commenced. And here I am, human at last,
      all touch of false aristocracy gone, peeping out across the grass wet with
      the dew of May, beneath which lie the common clay heroes who have died for
      democracy. How noiselessly these men gave up their lives and with how
      little consciousness of self-appreciation. They rather put us to shame&mdash;we
      privileged dawdlers in our haunted minds. They recognized the one straight
      thing to do when the opportunity presented itself; they did it swiftly and
      unreasoningly with their might. They didn't write about what they
      did; for them the doing was sufficient. I think I shall always be a humble
      man after such companionship, if I survive. I see life in courageous
      vistas of actions now; formerly I was like Hamlet&mdash;I thought myself
      into a green sickness. Marriage and children, a home and family love are
      the best that anyone can extract from life. There have been years when I
      didn't like my kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Out of the many things that have come to me in the past six months I am
      particularly glad of little Tinker's friendship&mdash;P.'.
      baby. She's not two yet, but we were real pals. She would never go
      to sleep until I had kissed her in her cot &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo; First
      thing in the morning she would be beside my bed, tugging at the clothes
      and ordering me to &ldquo;Det up.&rdquo; Since I've been gone they've
      had to ring the bell and pretend that I'm just entering the hall, so
      that they may make her go to sleep contented. When they ask her, &ldquo;Where's
      Con?&rdquo; she reaches up to the window and points. &ldquo;Dorn walk in
      park,&rdquo; she says. They talk about the love of a woman keeping a man
      straight, but I don't think it's to be compared with the love
      of a little child. You can't lie to them.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sharp rat-a-tat of the machine guns has started; but the mist is too
      thick for me to see what is happening&mdash;&mdash;It's nothing; it's
      died down.
    </p>
    <p>
      In an hour I shall be relieved, and shall return to the guns and post this
      letter. It will reach you when? Sometime in June, I expect, when the
      summer is really come and you're wearing your cool dresses. I can
      see you going out in the early morning to do your shopping.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 7, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am sitting in my
      bed&mdash;my sleeping-sack, I mean&mdash;which is spread out on the
      red-tiled floor of a funny little cottage. There isn't much of the
      floor left, as four of the other officers are sharing the room with me.
      Coming in through the window is the smell of sweet myrtle, old-fashioned
      and quiet; from far away drifts in the continual pounding of the guns and,
      strangely muddled up with the gunfire, the multitudinous croaking of
      frogs. I'm having an extraordinary May month of it in lovely
      country, marching through the showers, getting drenched and drying when
      the sun deigns to make an appearance. After being off a horse for so long,
      I'm in the saddle for many hours every day.
    </p>
    <p>
      I am glad that you all feel the way you do about my returning to the
      Front. I was sure you wouldn't want me to be out of these great
      happenings. My fear, when I was in England this spring, was the same as I
      had when I first joined&mdash;that fighting would all-be ended before I
      got into the line. No fear of that; I think we're in for another two
      years of it. There's hot work ahead&mdash;the hottest of the entire
      war. Oddly enough my spirits rise as the struggle promises to grow
      fiercer. I don't know why, unless it is that as the action quickens
      one has a chance of giving more. There's nothing sad about being
      wounded or dying for one's country. In this war one does so much
      more than that&mdash;he dies for the whole of humanity.
    </p>
    <p>
      Outside my window a stretch of hedges runs down to a little brook. Ducks,
      geese, cocks and hens make farmyard noises from dawn till last thing at
      night. Above all the peace and quiet, the distant guns keep up their
      incessant murmur. What a variety of places are likely to shelter me before
      the summer is ended&mdash;woods, ditches, open fields, trenches. It's
      all in the game and is romance of a sort. I'm sunburnt and hard. I
      feel tremendously alive.
    </p>
    <p>
      Once again all the striving and ambition of literary success has vanished.
      I'm only a subaltern&mdash;and far prouder to be that than a writer.
      I'm estimated by none but my soldiering qualities and power to show
      guts. We were lawyers, engineers, business-men&mdash;now we're
      soldiers and inquire nothing of each other's past.
    </p>
    <p>
      A thrush has started singing; he's in the willows that stand by the
      brookside. The planes go purring overhead, but he doesn't care. He
      goes on singing towards the evening sun as though his heart knew nothing
      but joy. He will be here singing long after we have passed upon our way.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't get worrying about my safety. You're sure to be feeling
      nervous at the wrong times, when I'm perfectly safe. Just feel glad
      that I'm allowed to be here, and don't look ahead.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 14, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m afraid
      you'll be feeling that I've neglected you. Whenever I miss a
      mail I have the reproachful picture of the disappointed faces of you three
      at the early morning breakfast&mdash;so it isn't wilful neglect. I've
      had no time, for reasons which I can't explain. In this way of life
      one has to snatch the odd moments for those he loves best and to break off
      when the sterner obligations intrude themselves.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm in a beautiful part of the country at present&mdash;it must be
      beautiful, for it is providing us with three ducks for dinner to-night. I
      doubt whether you could get three all at once in Newark. Moreover, we can
      get all the fresh cream and butter that we like. Of course this won't
      last. Any morning we may wake up to find ourselves back on iron rations&mdash;bully-beef
      and hard tack. But while it lasts we make the most of it. The most ripping
      attraction to me is something that you'll scarcely credit. The
      willow-groves are full of nightingales. As you go back to your billets
      after midnight and the guns make lightning through the grill-work of the
      trees, you see the little brown fellows with their throats quivering,
      pouring out their song of love and spring. When you've crept into
      your sleeping-sack, you lie awake listening&mdash;thinking of another
      world where love and life were once so certain.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>May</i> 18, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is the third
      day that I have planned to write you. Perhaps I may be able to do so this
      time.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have just been reading a letter from a nurse out in Palestine describing
      the little wooden crosses above fallen British soldiers which now star the
      Mount of Olives. The poetry of the ordinary crops out everywhere to-day;
      we are living on higher levels than we realize. For hundreds of years the
      future generations will weave legends round us, making us appear titanic
      spirit-people, just as we have clothed with almost unearthly splendour the
      Crusaders of the Dark Ages.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a pleasant May evening. The fields are golden with buttercups.
      Above the singing of the birds I can hear a low droning as of bees among
      flowers; but the droning is of homing aeroplanes. This is the kind of
      weather and country in which it would not be unbeautiful to die.
    </p>
    <p>
      When I went down this morning to the barn in which my section is
      stationed, I found notice printed on the door, on either side a British
      and American flag-and underneath a luridly illustrated Sunday magazine
      selection of extracts from <i>The Glory of the Trenches</i>. A small
      world, isn't it?
    </p>
    <p>
      I have been reading a book lately that would interest you; it's by
      Ford Madox Hueffer and is called <i>On Heaven</i>. It consists of a number
      of poems written while on active service. He's managed to put down
      in a rough and tumble of words a good many of our hungers and adorations.
      I hadn't realized before I read him how very much of the
      conversation of our soldiers is an exchange of confidences about the women
      they love or have loved. I believe every man at the Front has a hope of
      the girl he will be true to some day, and a fear lest&mdash;&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      One of Hueffer's poems on the subject is very beautiful. It starts
      this way:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;In Chepstow stands a castle;
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      My love and I went there;
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      The foxgloves on the wall all heard
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Her footsteps on the stair.
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      The sun was high in heaven
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And the perfume in the air
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Came from purple cat's valerian&mdash;
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      But her footsteps on the stair
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Made a sound like silver music
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Thro' the perfume in the air.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      The last verse sums up the dread of many a fighting-man&mdash;that all his
      dreams are only dreams, and that a return to reality may disappoint him:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;And another soldier fellow
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Shall come courting of my dear.
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And it's I shall not be with her
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      With my lip beside her ear.
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      For it's he shall walk beside her
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      In the perfume of the air
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      To the silver, silver music
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Of her footstep on the stair.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      All the world's idealists are in the trenches by now. What a shining
      cloud of imaginings must rise up to the Soul which lies behind the world.
      God must be amazed to find that horror can make His obstinate creations so
      simple and childlike. Here are millions of us who once thought only of our
      social and individual bellies, now thinking only of the unborn children
      and the things of the spirit. All the fond and dear accepted affections
      have become a kind of heaven that lies in the past instead of the future.
      If we die we don't want any heaven that isn't a re-living of
      the old happy memories.
    </p>
    <p>
      I find that Hueffer expresses a feeling that many of us have secretly, but
      which I have never heard any man acknowledge&mdash;the feeling that all
      the remainder of his days he will have to be explaining if he comes to the
      end of the war alive&mdash;almost the feeling that he will have lost his
      great chance of nobility by not dying. Hueffer's poem is called <i>One
      Day's List</i>; it's a list of three officers and 270 other
      ranks of his regiment who were killed in action. It commences:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;My dears,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      The rain drips down on Rouen Town,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      The leaves drip down
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And so the mud
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Turns orange brown.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      And it has for its refrain
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;But you&mdash;at least&mdash;are out of it.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      It goes on to tell of the officers who fell, and repeats the reflection
      which we all have when we gaze on the dead at the end of an attack and
      know that we ourselves have escaped:
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;One wonders why you died.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      And then,
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      &ldquo;We never talked of glory,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And each thought a lot of one girl
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      And waited most days for hours in the rain
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      Till she came:
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      But we never talked of Fame&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      And lastly, addressing the dead,
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      &ldquo;But we who remain shall grow old,
    </p>
    <p class="indent20">
      We shall know the cold
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of cheerless
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And mirrors showing stained and ageing faces,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And the long ranges of comfortless years
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And the long gamut of human fears&mdash;
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      But, for you, it shall be for ever Spring,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And only you shall be for ever fearless,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And only you, where the water-lily swims
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Shall walk along the pathways, thro' the willows
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of your west.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      You who went west,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And only you on silvery twilight pillows
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Shall take your rest
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      In the soft sweet glooms,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Of twilight rooms&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      There's the whole of our one and only cowardice in a nut-shell&mdash;that
      we, who have posed as conquerors for a while, will, if we survive, return
      to the normal things of life to find our spirits unexalted and the
      commonplace still commonplace.
    </p>
    <p>
      Out here, where there are corpses in the thistles and &ldquo;the
      gas-shells burst like snow,&rdquo; we can talk of &ldquo;the silver,
      silver music of her footsteps on the stair,&rdquo; but we're
      mortally afraid that in less exultant moments, when the heart is not so
      starved for affection, we shall discover that the &ldquo;silver music&rdquo;
      is only the irritating sound of squeaky shoes.
    </p>
    <p>
      I can't hear from you again for at least six days&mdash;a long time
      to wait! I can't be bothered nowadays to let the mail-clerk sort out
      the letters: I grab the bag and go through it myself.
    </p>
    <p>
      There may be an interval between this letter and those that follow. If
      there is, don't worry yourselves. It is not possible to find the
      time or place to write under all circumstances.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 1, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> can't
      remember when last I wrote you. It isn't always easy to get the
      time. Recently I've spent a good many hours in the saddle and have
      been up early in the morning; when work is done the fresh air leaves one
      too tired for anything but sleep. But you mustn't worry about me. I'm
      stronger than I've been for months, and tanned to the colour of an
      Indian.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have recently met the doctor who did so much to pull me through at the
      Casualty Clearing Station when I was wounded last June. He's still
      the same tall, thin, silent man, with the kindest and sternest of faces.
      His brother, he tells me, is in America on the British Mission, and had
      informed him of America's immense preparations. Like all the men out
      here, I found him keenly eager to see the U.S.A. proportionately
      represented in the Front line. We are holding, and counting on the States
      to turn the tide dramatically in our favour. Our chaps are to calm and
      confident of success&mdash;out here there's none of the strain and
      nervousness which are felt by civilians. Our chaps are as philosophical
      and cheery as ever. &ldquo;Good old Fritz,&rdquo; they say, &ldquo;so he's
      taken another fifteen miles! Well, it'll be our turn next.&rdquo;
      Through defeat and success we carry on quite normally and unperturbed,
      confident of ultimate victory. The general opinion is that the Hun by his
      advances is only causing himself a lot of unnecessary trouble, as he'll
      have a longer distance to run back to Germany.
    </p>
    <p>
      Here's the first of June and mid-summer approaching when so many
      pleasant things used to happen&mdash;flights to the country, the
      purchasing of bathing-suits, fishing-nets, maps&mdash;the planning of such
      quantities of family adventures. It would be happy to think that some of
      these old pleasures might return one day. The longer the war goes on the
      more impossible it is to conjure up the picture of civilian ways of life
      or to see oneself as again in the picture. Everything grows blurred except
      the present, with the early risings, routine, orders, marches, and
      attacks. To be given our freedom would leave us dazed.
    </p>
    <p>
      This will probably reach you after you have left New York and settled down
      for the holidays in some quiet country place. There's only one spot
      which seems permanent in our family life&mdash;the little grey shack among
      the orchards in the Rockies. My thoughts fly to it very often these hot
      summer days. I see the lake like a blue mirror, reflecting the mountains
      and the clouds. I hear the throbbing of the launch. Bruce is barking on
      the wharf. Figures are moving about the boat-house. We climb the hill
      together where the brook sings through the flowers and the evening meal
      awaits us. And afterwards those long sleepy evenings when the dusk comes
      down and the flowers shine more vaguely, and we talk so endlessly,
      planning books, retraversing the past, mapping out a road to so many
      future El Dorados. I can remember these former happinesses without
      self-torture or regret. The present is so splendid that it outshines all
      former beauties. I go forward happily, believing that any bend of the
      future may bring the old kindnesses into view again.
    </p>
    <p>
      The old haunting dream of Blighty is growing up in me once again&mdash;the
      Blighty we speak of, think of, worship and imagine every hour of the day.
      It's worth being wounded if only to wake up the first morning in the
      long white English ward, with the gold-green sunlight dripping in from the
      leaves through the open windows. These are the exquisite moments of peace
      and rest which come to one in the midst of warfare. Of such moments within
      the last year I have had my share; they are happy to remember.
    </p>
    <p>
      And the war goes on and on. I was so afraid that it would be ended before
      ever I got back. The fear was needless. I shall be out here at least
      another year before peace is declared. There are times when I think that
      the Americans are not so far wrong in their guess when they give
      themselves &ldquo;four years to do this job.&rdquo; The Hun may be
      desperate; his very energy may be a proof of his exhaustion. But his death
      struggle is too vigorously successful to promise any very rapid end. Our
      hope is in America, with her high courage, her sacrifice, and her millions
      of men. If she had not joined us, we would still stand here chaffingly and
      be battered till not one of us was left. The last one would die with the
      smile of victory on his mouth. Whatever happens, they'll never catch
      any British fighting-man owning that his tail is down. But the thought of
      the American millions gives us confidence that, though we are wiped out,
      we shall not have lost. Like runners in a relay race, though we are spent,
      the pace we have set will enable those who come after us to win in the
      last lap.
    </p>
    <p>
      But don't worry about me. I'm having a splendid run for my
      money, and am far more happy than I deserve.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 1, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s per usual when I
      write to you, I have my nose up against a solitary candle, am hedged in by
      shadows, and have the stump of a cigarette in my mouth. For days I have
      been waiting for letters from home, but none has arrived as yet. Either
      the ship has gone down or some other calamity has happened. I now promise
      myself that to-morrow there will be a huge package of belated mail for me.
    </p>
    <p>
      We're travelling very light at present. The first thing I did on my
      return was to cut down my kit to the barest necessities and send all the
      balance back to England. It's better to have it safe in London, if
      out of immediate reach, than to have to abandon it in a ditch or
      shell-hole. While the summer lasts there are a great number of things that
      one can do without.
    </p>
    <p>
      What an unsportsmanly crowd the Germans are! I think more than anything
      else it will be their lack of fair play that we shall hold against them
      when war is ended. Yesterday at the Pope's request we were foolish
      enough to refrain from bombing Cologne, so the Hun took the opportunity to
      both bomb and shell the Catholics of Paris. It makes one itch to grab a
      bayonet and go over the top to do him as much damage as opportunity will
      allow. The Hun is educating us out of our good-humoured contempt into a
      very deep-seated hatred of him. The other day I was in a forward town
      recently evacuated by its population. You walked through silent, torn
      streets, the windows all broken by shells, the doors sagging from their
      hinges and open. You peered across the thresholds into the houses. In many
      cases meals were still on the tables, partly eaten and hastily left. A
      stray cat scurried out into the yard; nothing else stirred. Over the
      entire death-like silence the summer sun shone down and far away a cuckoo
      was calling. One gets accustomed to the outward symbols of such tragedies&mdash;the
      broken homes, abandoned security and foregone happiness. The people
      themselves get used to it. To-day I met a farm-wagon piled high with the
      household gods, while a peasant woman walked beside with her best hat
      carried in a paper-bag in her hand. That was very typical&mdash;in all the
      ruin that had befallen a home to still cling to the best hat.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm very happy and well, living almost entirely in the open and in
      the saddle a good part of the day. The part of France I have lived in
      since my return is by far the cleanest and most beautiful that I have seen
      on active service. The weather has been golden and glorious. There is none
      of that fear in our hearts that you must experience for us. We're as
      certain of victory as we were during the days of the big Vimy advance.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Army is a nursery organization, full of annoying pomposities and
      amusing class distinctions. Just at present we're being pestered
      with continual inspections, when each battery tries to invent some new
      trick for making itself look smarter. Soldiers, on such occasions, are
      like a lot of old women at a spring cleaning. The men much prefer killing
      Boches to being inspected. Burnishing steel, chasing all over the country
      to buy Brasso, spending fortunes on polish for the harness all seem such a
      fruitless waste of time when the Huns are hammering our line. But, of
      course, cleanliness has a moral effect on men who have been long under
      shell-fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a discursive sort of letter, and doesn't contain much real
      news. It's just for remembrance.
    </p>
    <h3>
      XLIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 4, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
      left the gramophone shrilly declaring that &ldquo;When he fancies he is
      past love, it is then he meets his last love and he loves her as he never
      loved before.&rdquo; London comes with us to the Front. We hum the tunes
      of Piccadilly and Leicester Square, and we scheme such splendid times for
      our return. Leave has opened up again, but by a careful calculation I have
      discovered that it will take twenty-one years four months and three days
      till my turn comes round at the present rate of allotments.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some New York papers have just arrived and an exceedingly ancient cake,
      but no letters. In the midst of a great offensive it is wonderful that
      anything gets to us at all. We're as far away from you both in
      reality and imagination as though we lived in a different world. Our
      standards of conduct, normality, right living are not your standards&mdash;our
      hopes and fears are all different. Again, as when I first came to the
      Front, everything civilian seems a tale I have read about. I cannot
      believe that that person who was in New York last October was really
      myself. I rather wonder at him and at his capacity for writing about the
      commonplace events of the present life. Now I couldn't write a line
      about the war if my life depended on it. I see nothing in perspective
      except the endless path of duty which leads on ahead as each day
      introduces itself. To what goal that path leads I sometimes try to guess&mdash;to
      something wonderful and unforeseen, I have no doubt.
    </p>
    <p>
      I judge from what I read that the entire world which is not at the Front
      is anxious and depressed. We're just the same as ever&mdash;cheery
      and waiting whatever may befall with a stoicism born of confidence. Our
      belief in ourselves, our cause, and our ability to win, never wavers. How
      extraordinarily normal we are you could hardly imagine. The moment our men
      get out of the trenches they begin to play baseball, football, cricket,
      etc. There's a big lake near to where we are with red cliffs around
      it. Here every evening you can see the poised white figures of soldiermen.
      Last Sunday we held aquatic sports there, and had a fine display of
      swimming. It's wonderful to see the chaps so happy when you remember
      that nine-tenths of their companions of this time last year are either
      wounded or dead. As you may guess, we never in our conversation call
      attention to this fact, though there can be few, if any, who forget.
    </p>
    <p>
      There are children where we are at present. It's amusing to see them
      making friends with our boys. They slip their little paws into the big
      brown hands and toddle along quite proudly.
    </p>
    <p>
      I don't see how anyone could help loving our men&mdash;they're
      so simple. Their faults, when you know the hearts which they hide, become
      endearing. I think, especially when I see them with the French kiddies,
      &ldquo;Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      Please thank the donor of the cake which arrived to-day. We're
      eating it&mdash;don't tell her it was dry.
    </p>
    <h3>
      L
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 7,1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's a
      glorious summer evening&mdash;the end of a perfect day, during which I
      have done my share in capturing two German spies, who now repose
      unrestfully in our guard-room.
    </p>
    <p>
      This morning, when I was leading a hundred mounted men along a road, a
      terrible thing happened. The road was narrow and on one side of it
      motor-lorries were standing; on the other side was a little unfenced
      river. Suddenly and without warning, tearing down the hill ahead of us,
      came the enemy. The enemy consisted of a pair of mules harnessed to a
      heavy iron roller. The roller caught my lead-driver and threw him and his
      two horses to the ground, then it charged on into the mass behind us.
      Miraculously no bones were broken; we all have nine lives. Those mokes
      have put us up to a new trick for dispersing enemy cavalry which ought to
      be effective. Believe me, two mad mules, going thirty miles an hour with
      an iron roller behind them, are utterly demoralizing. It is impossible for
      any cavalry in the world to withstand them.
    </p>
    <p>
      You don't know, can't guess, how letters from home buck me up
      and keep the lamp of my ideals still burning. There are moments when the
      mere mechanical side of warfare fills one's mind with an infinite
      depression. One sees men doing splendid acts, day in day out, like
      automatons animated by the spring of duty. One almost forgets that there
      is any human element of choice in the matter, or a difference between
      fighting and fighting well. When your pages come, I remember&mdash;remember
      that just such affections and human ties bind the hearts of all who are
      out here to life. I begin to see my chaps as personalities again and not
      as only soldiers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Outside the chaps are singing &ldquo;O my, I don't want to die; I
      want to go home.&rdquo; Now they've changed to &ldquo;Take me Over
      to Blighty.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <h3>
      LI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 8, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ast night I saw
      the old lady who nursed me up so that I was fit to come and meet you in
      London when you all came in 1917 from America. Seeing her again brought
      back all sorts of memories of the depressions and exaltations of other
      days. I think I have been both sadder and more happy since the war began
      than in all the other years of my life. And I used to write about the
      world not as it is, but about the world as I would have made it, had I
      been God. Now I'm trying to see things as they are, with the
      inevitable God shining through them. Here, at the Front, God is everywhere
      apparent&mdash;but not the cathedral God I had imagined&mdash;not the
      majestic God with sublime uplifted eyes which know nothing of finite
      terror. The God of the Front has brave eyes which have suffered; His mouth
      is a human mouth, which has known the pain of parting and kisses; His
      hands are roughened and burnt and bloody; there is the stoop of agony in
      His shoulders and the hint of a valiant jest in His splendid bearing of
      defiance. He is one of us. He is us entirely. He is no longer remote and
      eternal. For us He has again become flesh&mdash;He is our comrade; He is
      the man upon our left and our right hand, who goes into battle with us; He
      is our dead. We cannot escape Him; the pettinesses of our sins are
      forgotten in the resemblance of our neighbours to His majesty. Nowadays I
      cannot think of the poet's Christ, wandering through Galilean lilies
      in a woman's robes. It's His manly death, His white timeless
      body on the Cross that I remember. Without Calvary all His words would
      have been unconvincing and He Himself a dreamer's fancy. It was only
      on the Cross that Christ became flesh&mdash;all that went before is like a
      lovely legend gradually materializing in the atmosphere of tragedy. God
      save us from being always happy. It's the chance of being always
      happy that I dread most after the war. There's a terrible corpulence
      about happiness which borders very closely on physical grossness. To
      strive and keep on striving&mdash;that is what I want for the world when
      war is ended, and to have to pay with sacrifice for each advance. I don't
      think any of us who come back will covet virtue as our goal, save in as
      far as virtue embraces everything that is meant by manliness. To be
      virtuous in the original sense was just that&mdash;to be physically
      perfect.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah, how greedy I become out here to see some of the sudden qualities which
      war has called out, transplanted into the civilian world. I so fear that
      with peace those qualities may be debased and lost.
    </p>
    <p>
      More than anything else the gramophone makes me remember the old days and
      the old aims and desires. It's the greatest miracle of the century
      that Caruso and Harry Lauder and George Robey, with all the best of music
      and laughter-makers, can step into our dug-out from the point of a needle.
      When we move, whatever else is left behind, the gramophone always goes. It
      travels in G.S. wagons, on the foot-board of limbers&mdash;in all sorts of
      ways. We're feeling sentimental; we crank up the canned music. Above
      the roar of the guns we hear, &ldquo;All that I want is someone to love
      me, and to love me well.&rdquo; We're feeling merry, so we dance to
      &ldquo;Arizona.&rdquo; All the world of forgotten pleasures can come to us
      through that needle-point. And I&mdash;whenever it starts&mdash;I see home
      pictures&mdash;&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      Then in an extraordinarily poignant way I feel earnest to have lived,
      loved, done something big before I die. Everything already done seems
      insignificant and worthless. It's the feeling which you once called
      &ldquo;divine discontent.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      It's evening, as it always is when I write to you. Next door a
      little refugee child is chanting his prayers under the direction of his
      father. One can hear the humming of planes overhead. A funny world! How
      persistent the religious instinct is, that men should still credit God
      when their hearts are bankrupt!
    </p>
    <p>
      Good-night, I'm going to bed now.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 12, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ith me it's
      6.30 in the evening. I'm sitting in a farmhouse overlooking the
      usual French farmyard. The chickens fly in at the window&mdash;also the
      cats. The window is my own mode of entrance; I feel like a burglar when I
      enter my &ldquo;bedroom&rdquo; in this fashion after midnight. Two other
      officers share the floor with me&mdash;literally the floor, for we use our
      sleeping-sacks.
    </p>
    <p>
      There's a little boy about three, with long hair, so that at first
      we mistook him for a girl, who has become the temporary mascot of the
      battery. He carries the broken remains of a toy rifle and falls in with
      the men on parades, holding one of the fellows' hands. He's
      picked up the detail for &ldquo;'Shun!&rdquo; and &ldquo;Stand at
      Ease!&rdquo; and carries out the orders as smartly as anyone, looking
      terrifically serious about it. The men call him &ldquo;little sister&rdquo;
      on account of his appearance, and make him a great pet. I left him sobbing
      his heart out to-day when I had to leave him behind after he had fallen in
      with a squad of riflemen.
    </p>
    <p>
      There's a genuine little girl who is our friend, of whom I am even
      fonder. She's a refugee kiddy of about thirteen&mdash;slim and
      pretty as a fairy, with a long corn-gold plait of hair down her back.
    </p>
    <p>
      As soon as we start the gramophone going she peeps noiselessly as a spirit
      through the window; then one of us lifts her across the sill and she sits
      on our knees with her face hidden shyly against our shoulders.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm at present reading <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>. That I
      should be reading them in such different circumstances from any that Swift
      could have imagined, kindles the art of writing books into a new romance.
      To be remembered years after you yourself have forgotten, to have men
      prying into the workings of a brain which has been dust in a shell for two
      centuries, is a very definite kind of immortality. To be forgotten&mdash;that
      is what we most dread. Never to have happened would not matter; but to
      have happened, to have walked the world, laughed, loved, created, and then
      to be treated as though we had not happened, there lies the sting of
      death. The thought of extinction offends our vanity; we had thought that
      we were of more consequence to the universe. It doesn't comfort us
      to be recalled impersonally in the mass, as the men who captured Vimy or
      thrust the Hun back from some dangerous objective. In the mass we shall go
      down through history, no doubt, but not as human beings&mdash;only as
      heroes. We would rather be recalled by our weaknesses&mdash;as so-and-so
      who loved a certain girl, who played a good hand of poker, who overdrew
      his bank-account. Out here, from the moment a man places foot in France,
      the anonymity of death commences. No one cares who he was in a previous
      world, what he did for a living, whether he was a failure or a success.
      None of his former virtues stand to his credit except as they contribute
      to his soldier-life of the present. None of us talk about our past; if we
      did, our company would yawn at us. Only the mail arriving at irregular
      intervals keeps us in knowledge that we once had other personalities.
      Letters are like ghosts of a world abandoned, tiptoeing through the dream
      of a sleeper. Between you and us there is a great gulf fixed&mdash;&mdash;Not
      that we resent it. Someone has to pay a price for the future safety of the
      world; out of all the ages we have been chosen as the persons. There is
      nothing to resent,&mdash;quite the contrary. Only, now and then creeps in
      the selfish longing that we may be remembered not as soldiers, but as what
      we were&mdash;in our weakness as well as in our strength.
    </p>
    <p>
      You're in a country place where I have not been and which I cannot
      picture. I hope you're all enjoying yourselves. There's no
      need to worry on my account.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 20,1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am in the
      kind of place that William Morris wrote about. My room is in a monastery,
      from which all but two of the monks have long since fled. The nunnery, in
      which the rest of the officers are billeted, was long since vacated. A
      saint was born here, and there used to be pilgrimages to his shrine; now
      only the two monks remain to toll the bell, play the organ, and to go
      through all the religious observances. The walls of the room in which I am
      writing are covered with illuminated prayers. Pinned on the door outside
      is the list of all the duties for the day. From my window I can see the
      two faithful ones pacing in the overgrown garden, counting their beads,
      murmuring their prayers, and behaving in every way as though the war had
      not commenced. Such despising of external happenings, even though it be
      mistaken, calls for admiration of sorts.
    </p>
    <p>
      The country is lovely and green now, all except the immediate battle-line.
      Birds sing, flowers bloom, and fleecy white clouds go drifting overhead.
      One takes chance baths in chance-found brooks, and the men spread their
      tents in the meadows. There's everything that life can offer to
      tempt us to go on living at present. There are moments so happy that I
      almost wish that you could be here to share them.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-day I'm out of touch&mdash;no letters have arrived. Perhaps they
      will overtake us tomorrow. A thrush is singing in the monastery garden and
      the slow blue twilight is falling. Mingling as an accompaniment to the
      song of the thrush is the slow continual droning of a plane. The reminders
      of war are persistent and incessant. Nevertheless, in spite of war, I
      found a strawberry patch this afternoon and glutted myself.
    </p>
    <p>
      I see by to-day's paper that a racket has started on the Italian
      front. The Central Powers are declaring their weakness by striking out in
      too many directions. We give and we give, but we never break. We're
      waiting for America and her millions. How long before we can count on them
      to help us to attack?
    </p>
    <p>
      It's extraordinary how the belief in America has grown. First of all
      we said, &ldquo;She has come in too late"; then, &ldquo;She'll help
      us to win more quickly"; and now, &ldquo;We need her.&rdquo; If America
      has done nothing else, she has strengthened our <i>moral</i> all along the
      line; we fight better because we know that she is behind us.
    </p>
    <p>
      You're somewhere where the world is intensely quiet. I shall think
      of you where the world is happy.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 20, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve just
      finished reading a big batch of mail, and have had dinner and now sit
      looking out on the drenched country which is covered with a shabby evening
      sky. In the church, which adjoins the monastery in which I stay, monks are
      chanting. They are always chanting. One wonders for what it is that they
      pray; deeds at any moment, let alone the present, are so much better. I
      can picture what would happen here if the Germans came. I have caught
      myself thinking of Marie Odelle; our scenery is similar to that pictured
      in the play. Strange how one goes to imagination in search of
      illustrations of reality!
    </p>
    <p>
      You, at your end, seem to have been having some wildly exciting times with
      your processions in which the Kaiser has been publicly done away with. It's
      a phase which all countries go through, I suppose. England did at the
      beginning of the war. But now we entrain for the Front without bands
      playing, and do our best not to attract attention. We're a little
      ashamed of arousing other people's emotions on our behalf. All we
      want is a &ldquo;Cheerio and God bless You,&rdquo; for our good-bye. If we
      come back, it will be &ldquo;jolly fine"; and if we don't, &ldquo;C'est
      la guerre&rdquo;&mdash;we shrug our shoulders. In either event we see no
      reason why the feelings should be harrowed of those who stop behind.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a series of very early morning rises, I have been picturing to
      myself the day when I once again wake up at the Ritz, with a camouflaged
      foreigner to bring my breakfast to my pillow and then leave me in peace
      till twelve o'clock. I wonder now why I ever left my bed in peace
      times and find myself marvelling at my unnecessary energy. The French
      patriot who held receptions and did the business of the day while sitting
      in a bath of milk, had mastered the art of life. Unfortunately, if I
      remember rightly, he was made a glaring example of sloth by being &ldquo;done
      in&rdquo; while thus pleasurably occupied.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm off to do my rounds as orderly officer now. My sergeant is
      waiting, so, as the men say, &ldquo;I must ring off.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <h3>
      LV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 23, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I sit on a
      summer's evening in the red-tiled kitchen of an old farmhouse.
      Immediately under the open window to my right is the inevitable
      manure-heap&mdash;the size of which, they say, denotes the extent of the
      farmer's wealth. Barn-roofs, ochre-red, shine vividly in the pale
      gold of the sunset; at the end of the yard the walls fall away, giving the
      glimpse of an orchard with gnarled, lichen-covered fruit-trees. All kinds
      of birds are twittering and singing; house-swallows dart and dive across
      open spaces. In the distance the guns are booming. War affords one strange
      contrasts of sight and sound. Not many of the peasants have moved away;
      they have great faith in the Canadians. Every now and then a forlorn group
      will come trailing down the road between the hedges: an old tumbledown
      cart, drawn by an old tumble-down horse, piled and pyramided dangerously
      high with old tumble-down furniture. The people who accompany the vehicle
      are usually ancient and tumbledown as well. They make me recall someone's
      description of the Irish emigrants on the St. Lawrence, travelling with
      &ldquo;ragged poverty on their backs.&rdquo; In contrast with these few
      straggling fugitives, hounded by avaricious fear, is the calm of a country
      billowy with grain and sociable with the grinning contentment of
      quite-at-home British Tommies. Everything in their attitude seems to
      assure the French peasant, &ldquo;Don't worry, old dear. We're
      here. Everything's all right.&rdquo; From barns and houses and
      bivouacs come the sounds of gramophones, playing selections from quite the
      latest musical comedies. If you wander back into the fields you will find
      horsemen going over the jumps, men playing baseball and cricket, officers
      getting excited over tennis. We even held our Divisional Sports the other
      day&mdash;and this in the midst of the war's greatest offensive.
      This &ldquo;'Arf a mo', Kaiser,&rdquo; attitude of the
      Canadians would give you some idea of the esteem in which we hold the Hun.
      Our backs are not against the wall. We still have both the time and the
      inclination to be sportsmen and to laugh. I'm sure the enemy, grimly
      obsessed by the idea of breaking our line, never allows himself a moment
      for recreation, and I should think his balloon-observers, spying on us
      from the baskets of his distant sausages, must be very chagrined by our
      frivolity. The papers say, and very probably they're right, that
      German strategists are far ahead of those possessed by the Allies; but our
      men have learnt a trick worth all the strategy&mdash;they have learnt to
      laugh both in success and adversity. In this war, I believe we shall find
      that he who has acquired the habit of a light heart will do the laughing
      last. I should very much like to know how many gramophones travel with the
      German Tommies; hardly any, I'll bet. They have their bands with
      their patriotic music, keeping always before the men the singleness of
      their purpose. The singleness of their purpose tires them out. On our side
      of the line patriotism is the last thing you hear about. Thank God, we've
      got time to forget it.
    </p>
    <p>
      Whenever I start trying to explain to you the psychology of our
      fighting-men I'm always conscious that, even while I'm telling
      you the absolute truth, with the same words I'm creating a wrong
      impression. Fighting-men aren't magnificent most of the time; they're
      not idealists; they're not heroic. Very often they're petty
      and cynical and cowards. They're only magnificent and idealistic and
      heroic in the decision that brought them here, and in the last supreme
      moment when they bring their decision to fulfilment.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a letter I received from Paris the other day the puzzle of the modern
      soldier was very well expressed. &ldquo;I don't believe,&rdquo; it
      said, &ldquo;I will ever get used to the courage of the men who go on and
      on with this terrible game. I'm thinking more now of the French and
      the British soldiers, who are mended up only to go at it again. I never
      can get used to it or take it as a matter of course. When I think for a
      minute how it hurts to have a tooth filled, I wonder that all the armies
      of the world don't get up and run away from each other of one accord&mdash;every
      one who isn't a hero or a fool, that's to say.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      When I think over the problem calmly I have the same wonder. The problem
      was so neatly expressed that I read the passage out to the mess. They
      stopped in a round of poker to listen. &ldquo;Well, which are we,&rdquo; I
      asked; &ldquo;heroes or fools?&rdquo; &ldquo;Fools,&rdquo; they said
      unanimously, and then went on playing their hands again. They're
      right; we are fools. We're certainly not heroes. We're fools
      for a kind of kingdom of heaven's sake&mdash;but we don't act
      like the heaven part of it any more than we talk about our patriotism. Any
      mention of either would make us shudder.
    </p>
    <p>
      I wonder what motive brought the heathen Chinee to the Western Front. I've
      been told that he came that he might buy food for his family, because
      there's a famine in China. Maybe. His bronze face stares up into
      ours from out the green-gold of the standing wheat&mdash;stares up into
      ours with the inscrutable gaze of an age-old Buddha. He's the one
      human being on the Western Front who neither by acts nor words explains
      his nobility. Nobility there must have been to induce him to come; no
      reasoning creature would have jeopardized his body out of lust.
    </p>
    <p>
      Last night I rode beneath a full white moon for miles through the standing
      crops. I only struck a road to cross it and say good-bye to it&mdash;then
      on and on with the soft swish of the swelling stalks against my stirrups.
      Shall we recall our old panics and delights if we live to reach normality
      again? Will normality satisfy? Shall we be content to know that all the
      hoard of the future years is ours? In a word, shall we ever again desire
      to be safe? Questions which none of us can answer!
    </p>
    <h3>
      LVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>June</i> 27, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere's a
      glorious June morning with a touch of chill in the air and a jolly gold
      sun shooting arrows into the wheatfields. The chief sound I hear is the
      rattling of head-chains, for the drivers are hard at work shining up their
      harness. These summer days go by very pleasantly, but they throw one's
      thoughts back a little wistfully to the Junes of other years&mdash;especially
      those in which the train came skidding down the mountains from Spokane to
      the ranch and the lake. All day, from first waking in the morning, we
      begin to gamble on our chances with the mail. It arrives any time between
      two and five o'clock; the evening passes in reading and re-reading
      our letters and concocting replies. I think some letters from you are
      nearly due again and I'm hoping for one this afternoon.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think I mentioned that our battery has a French baby boy of three for
      its mascot, just at present. He has been christened Bully Beef, but for
      what reason I don't know. Bully Beef falls in beside the
      Sergeant-Major on all parades. During stables he inspects the horses,
      toddling round the lines and hanging on to the finger of an officer. The
      other day he fell into the river while the horses were watering. No one
      noticed his disappearance for a minute or two; then he was discovered
      standing nearly chin-deep, doing a very quiet cry. He was consoled with
      pennies, and I undertook to lead him up to his mother. There are many
      stories about Bully Beef's origin. Some say that his father is a
      rich Frenchman already married; others, a dead poilu; others, a sergeant
      of a Highland Division which was encamped in this neighbourhood. His
      mother is an exceedingly pretty French girl and she is not married. I can't
      help feeling that Bully Beef must be half British, for he isn't
      timid like a French child. On the contrary, he hides in the hedges and
      throws stones at us when he is offended, and has a finely exaggerated
      sense of his childish dignity. What memories he'll have when he's
      become a man.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was another character I mentioned in a previous letter&mdash;I
      called him &ldquo;Battling Brown &ldquo;&mdash;the chap has D.S.O.'.
      and Military Crosses with bars to them and delights in putting on raids. I've
      since found that he cuts a notch in his revolver for every Hun he has
      killed with it. His present weapon has eighteen notches and the wooden
      handle of the first is notched to pieces.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's refreshing to find a man on our side of the line who knows how
      to hate. If we had hated more at the first, the war would be ended.
      Personally I can only hate ideas and nations&mdash;not persons; I
      acknowledge this as a weakness in myself.
    </p>
    <p>
      I don't think any of us realize quite how much war has changed us,
      particularly in our relations to sex. Women had grown discontented with
      being wives and mothers, and had proved that in many departments they
      could compete with men. This competition was responsible for a growing
      disrespect. Men were beginning to treat women in a way they demanded&mdash;as
      though they were men. Women were beginning to regard men with a quiet
      sex-contempt. It looked as if chivalry and all that made for knighthood
      were at an end. Then came war, calling men to a sacrifice in which women
      had no share&mdash;could not share because they were physically incapable
      of fighting&mdash;and women to the only contribution they could make,
      mercy and motherhood. We've been flung back on our primal
      differences and virtues. War has cut the knotted sex-emancipation; we
      stand up to-day as elementally male and female as when the Garden of Eden
      was depopulated. Amongst our fighting-men, women actually hold the place
      which was allotted to them by idealists in troubadour times.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mothers and sisters and sweethearts, remembered at this distance, have
      made all women sacred. A new medievalism and asceticism have sprung out of
      our modern tragedy, enacted beneath the sea, on the land and in the
      clouds. The tragedy, while modern to us, is actually the oldest in the
      world&mdash;merely death.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's evening now. No letter from home came this afternoon.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 4, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am now attached
      with two guns to the infantry on a special job. I live with the battalion&mdash;speak
      about &ldquo;our battalion,&rdquo; in fact&mdash;and share quarters with
      the Trench Mortar officer. The country is green and fragrant with
      dog-roses. The dead have been gathered up and lie in little scattered
      graveyards. Our living men spread their blankets between the mounds and at
      night hang their equipment on the crosses. War robs men of all fear of the
      supernatural&mdash;or is it that the dead have become our brothers?
    </p>
    <p>
      One writes a description of battlefields to-day and it is untrue
      to-morrow. Everything has changed in the past year. Siege warfare, with
      deep trenches and guns in positions of observation, is becoming more rare;
      we are more mobile now and see more of the country. I believe, before many
      months are out, the dream of every gunner along the Western Front will
      have come true, and we shall be firing at the enemy over open sights and
      coming into action on the gallop. It will be far more sporting and
      exciting. The Trench Mortar officer with whom I am living remembers that
      kind of work in the early days, when my battery was still firing on the
      enemy while the Hun was bayoneting the batteries behind. He has a great
      tale of how he came right through the enemy without knowing, bringing up
      with him a precious load of small-arms ammunition to his General, who was
      cut off by the enemy. He and his five men were given rifles, and together
      with the waifs and strays of many broken regiments held the line against
      the advance on Calais. Experiences such as that are worth living for; I'm
      hopeful that before I take off khaki I may be in something of the kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      You needn't think of me any more&mdash;at least for the present&mdash;as
      living in beastliness and corruption. I daresay the country where I am is
      almost as beautiful as where you are spending your holidays. The Hun did
      the Allies a good turn when he advanced, for he shoved us back out of the
      filth of three years' fighting into cleanness. One can see deserted
      cottages with their gardens full of flowers, and green woods shaking their
      plumes against blue skies. At one of our halts the men did themselves very
      well with baskets of trout; they caught the trout by the simple expedient
      of flinging bombs into the river. The concussion killed the fish and they
      floated to the surface.
    </p>
    <p>
      For the present that is all my news.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 10, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am delighted to
      see that every day the prophecies I made in <i>Out to Win</i> are coming
      true. The attack that the Americans put on on 4th July is, to my mind, one
      of the most significant things that has happened yet. Their battle-cry,
      &ldquo;Lusitania,&rdquo; says everything in one word concerning their
      purpose in coming to France. If I were a Hun I should find it more
      terrifying than the most astounding statements of armaments and men. I can
      picture the enemy in those old shell-holes of the Somme that I know so
      well. It's early morning, and a low white mist steals ghost-like
      over that vast graveyard, where crumbling trenches and broken
      entanglements mark the resting-places of the dead. The enemy would be
      sleepy-eyed with his long vigil, but with the vanishing of night he would
      fancy himself safe. Suddenly, hurled through the dawn, comes the cry,
      &ldquo;Lusitania!&rdquo; It must have sounded like the voice of conscience&mdash;the
      old and boasted sin for which medals were struck, the infamy of which was
      worn as a decoration, rising out of the past to exact suffering for
      suffering, panic for panic, blood for blood. Whoever chose that battle-cry
      was a poet&mdash;he said everything in the shortest and most rememberable
      way. America is in France to act as the revenge of God. She has suffered
      in the spirit what France has suffered in the flesh; through being in
      France she has learnt from the French the justice of passionate, punishing
      hate. I can think that somewhere beneath the Atlantic the bodies of
      murdered children sat up at that cry; I can believe that the souls of
      their mothers went over the top with those American boys. &ldquo;Lusitania!&rdquo;
      The white-hot anger of chivalry was in the cry.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes, and we, too, are learning to hate. For years we have hesitated to
      dogmatize as to which side God favours; but now, since hospitals have been
      bombed and the women who came to nurse us have been slaughtered, Cromwell's
      religious arrogance has taken possession of our hearts&mdash;&ldquo;Let
      God arise, and let His enemies be scattered.&rdquo; When it was only we
      men who were wounded and killed by the Hun we could afford to regard him
      with an amused tolerance, but now&mdash;&mdash;This is how we have
      changed: we should welcome our chance to kill at close quarters and to
      forget mercy. This time last year we were proud to say that we had no
      personal animosity for the individual German; it sounded so strong and
      impartial. We don't feel that way now; can't feel that way. At
      last, because of our women who are dead, we have learnt the magnanimity of
      hatred. Germany has entered a new phase of the war&mdash;a phase which her
      persistent brutality has created. She will find no more smiling faces on
      our side of No Man's Land when she lifts up her hands, shouting
      &ldquo;Kamerad!&rdquo; We are not her comrades; we never shall be again so
      long as our race-memory lasts. Like Cain, the brand of murder is on her
      forehead and the hand of every living creature is against her. When she
      pleads with us her common humanity, we will answer &ldquo;Lusitania!&rdquo;
      and charge across the Golgotlias and the mists of the dawn, driving her
      into oblivion with the bayonet. No truth of the spirit which her voice
      utters will ever be truth for us again. It has taken four years to teach
      us our lesson; we were slow; we gave quarter; but we have learnt.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July 11</i>, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve returned
      from being with the infantry and am back with my battery now. For the next
      few days I shall probably be out of touch with my incoming mail.
    </p>
    <p>
      I have spoken several times to you about the test of war; how it
      acknowledges one chief virtue&mdash;courage. A man may be a poet, painter,
      may speak with the tongue of angels; but, if he has not courage, he is as
      sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The other day I was accidentally the
      witness to the promulgation of a court-martial. The man was an officer; he
      had been sentenced to be shot, but the order had been changed to
      cashiering. There, in the sunlight, all his brother officers were drawn up
      at attention. Across the fields the men whom he had commanded were playing
      baseball. He was led out bareheaded. The sentence and the crime for which
      he had been sentenced were read aloud to him in an unsteady voice. When
      that was ended, an officer stepped forward and stripped the buttons and
      the badges of rank from his uniform. It was like a funeral at which his
      honour was buried. Under an escort, he was given &ldquo;Right turn,&rdquo;
      and marched away to meet the balance of life that remained. In peace times
      he'd have been reckoned a decent-looking chap, a little smart, but
      handsome&mdash;the kind of fellow of whom some mother must have been proud
      and whom probably at least one girl loved. A tall chap, too&mdash;six foot
      at least. I see him standing in the strong sunlight, white-faced and dumb&mdash;better
      dead&mdash;despised. His fate was the fate which many of us feared before
      we put on khaki when the call first came. We had feared that we might not
      be able to stand the test and might be shot behind the lines. How and why
      we can stand it we ourselves cannot say. It was all a gamble at the start.
      Here was one man who had failed. The arithmetic of his spiritual values
      was at fault: he had chosen bitter life when death would have been
      splendid.
    </p>
    <p>
      This must all sound very strange to you in your environment, where your
      honour and life are safe. Perhaps I should not intrude such scenes upon
      you.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 15, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he mail has just
      come up to us. The runner stuck his head into the hole in the trench where
      I live and shoved in a pile of letters. &ldquo;How many for me?&rdquo; I
      asked. &ldquo;All of them,&rdquo; he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm all alone at the battery, the major having gone forward to
      reconnoitre a position and all the other subalterns being away on duties&mdash;so
      I've had a quiet time browsing through my correspondence. A Hun cat
      sits at the top of the dug-out across the trench and blinks at me. We
      found him on the position. He's fat and sleek and plausible-looking.
      I can't get it out of my mind that he's kept up his strength
      by battening on the corpses of his former owners. Between the guns there
      are two graves; one to an unknown British and the other to an unknown
      German soldier.
    </p>
    <p>
      The battlefield itself stretches away all billowy with hay for miles and
      miles. When a puff of wind blows across it, it rustles like fire. The
      sides of the trenches are gay with poppies and cornflowers. The larks sing
      industriously overhead, and above them, like the hum of a swarm of bees,
      pass the fighting planes. Miles to the rear I can hear the strife of
      bands, playing their battalions up to the fine. A brave, queer, battling
      world! If one lives to be old, he will talk about these days and persuade
      himself that he longs to be back, if the time ever comes when life has
      lost its challenge.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Hun doesn't seem to be so frisky as he was in March and April.
      Now that he's quieting down, we begin to lose our hatred and to
      speak of him more tolerantly again. But whatever may be said in his
      defence, he's a nasty fellow.
    </p>
    <p>
      Since I started this letter I've dined, done a lot of work, watched
      a marvellous sunset, and received orders to push up forward very early in
      the morning. I shall probably send you a line from the O.P. The mystery of
      night has settled down. Round the western rim of the horizon there is
      still a stain of red. Under the dusk, limbers and pack horses crawl along
      mud trails and sunken roads. We become populous when night has fallen.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 17, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-night brought a
      great wad of American papers. What a time America is having&mdash;all
      shouting and anticipation of glory without any suspicion of the cost. War's
      fine when it's khaki and drums on Fifth Avenue&mdash;if it wasn't
      tortured bodies, broken hearts, and blinded eyes. Where I am the dead lie
      thick beneath the sod; poppies pour like blood across the landscape, and
      cornflowers stand tall in sockets empty of eyes. The inscription &ldquo;Unknown
      Soldier&rdquo; is written on many crosses that grow like weeds from the
      shell-holes. All the feet that marched away with shouting now lie silent;
      their owners have even lost their names. Could death do more? Where I live
      at present everything is blasted, stagnant, decayed, morose. War's a
      fine spectacle for those who only cheer from the pavement.
    </p>
    <p>
      It isn't that I'm angry with people for seizing life and being
      gay. We're gay out here&mdash;but we've earned the right. Many
      of us are happier than we ever were in our lives. Why not? For the first
      time we're quite sure every minute of the day that we're doing
      right. And that certainty is the only excuse for being happy while the
      Front line is suffering the tortures of the damned.
    </p>
    <p>
      I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in
      torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and
      to-morrow I go forward again. It's really great fun forward when it's
      fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe
      his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch
      plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his
      intentions and plans. War's the greatest game of the intellect yet
      invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's night now. I'm sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by
      the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of
      &ldquo;armed men falling downstairs,&rdquo; to borrow Stevenson's
      phrase. It's really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles
      tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings,
      He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser's
      &ldquo;Me und Gott.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won't
      be ended until all the world is under arms. He's an optimist.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 18, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m up
      forward, sitting on a bank, looking at the Hun country through a hedge. I
      know you'd give anything to be with me. In front there's a big
      curtain of sea-grey sky, against which planes crawl like flies. A
      beautiful half-moon looks down at me with the tragic face of Harlequin.
      Far away across a plain furrowed by shell-fire the spires and domes of
      cities in the captured territory shine. Like all forbidden lands, there
      are times when the Hun country looks exquisitely and unreally beautiful,
      as though it were tempting us to cross the line.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've just left off to watch a squadron of enemy planes which have
      been attempting to get across to our side. Everything has opened up on
      them; machine guns are spouting their luminous trails of tracer bullets;
      archies are bursting little cotton-wool clouds of death between them and
      their desire. They evidently belong to a circus, for they're
      slipping and tumbling and looping like great gulls to whom the air is
      native. Ah, now they've given it up and are going home thwarted. I
      wonder what the poor old moon thinks of all these antics and turmoils in
      the domain which has been hers absolutely for so many æons of nights.
    </p>
    <p>
      The horrible and the beautiful blending in an ecstasy, that is what war is
      to-day. All one's senses are unnaturally sharpened for the
      appreciation of both happiness and pain. You walk down a road where a
      shell fell a minute ago; the question always in your mind is, &ldquo;Why
      wasn't I there?&rdquo; You shrug your shoulders and smile, &ldquo;I
      may be there next time&rdquo;&mdash;and bend all your energies towards
      being merry to-day. The threat of the end is very provocative of
      intensity.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's nearly dark now and I'm writing by the moonlight. One
      might imagine that the angels were having pillow-fights in their bedrooms
      by the row that's going on in the sky. And there was a time when the
      occasional trolley beneath my windows used to keep me awake at night!
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>5 a.m</i>. The letters came last night. You may imagine the place in
      which I read them&mdash;lying on a kind of coffin-shelf in a Hun dug-out
      with the usual buzzing of battened flies and the usual smell and snoring
      of an unwashed B.C. party. How good it is to receive letters; they're
      the only future we have. After I'd sent the runner down to the
      battery I had to go forward to a Gomorrha of fallen roofs, which stands
      almost on the edge of No Man's Land. Stagnant shell-holes, rank
      weeds, the silence of death, lay all about me, and along the horizon the
      Hun flares and rockets danced an impish jig of joy. When the war is ended
      we shall miss these nights. Strange as it sounds, we shall look back on
      them with wistfulness and regret. Our souls will never again bristle with
      the same panic of terror and daring. We shall become calm fellows, filling
      out our waistcoats to a contented rotundity; no one will believe that we
      were once the first fighting troops of the European cock-pit. We shall
      argue then, where to-day we strike. We shall have to preach to make men
      good, whereas to-day we club vice into stupor. We shall miss these nights.
    </p>
    <p>
      I glance up from my page and gaze out through the narrow slit from which I
      observe. I see the dear scarlet poppies shining dewy amid the yellow
      dandelions and wild ox-eyed daisies. I am very happy this morning. The
      world seems a good place. For the moment I have even given over detesting
      the Hun. With luck, I tell myself, I shall sit in old gardens again and
      read the old volumes, and laugh with the same dear people that I used to
      love. With luck&mdash;but when?
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France |July 19|, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>e're all
      sitting round the table studying maps of the entire Western Front and
      prophesying the rapid downfall of the Hun. It's too early to be
      optimistic, but things are going excellently and the American weight is
      already beginning to be felt. It may take two years to reach the Rhine,
      but we shall get there. Until we do get there, I don't think we
      shall be content to stop. We may not all be above ground for the end, but
      people who are like us will be there.
    </p>
    <p>
      My batman has just returned to the guns from the wagon-lines, bringing me
      two letters and a post-card. They were most welcome. After reading them I
      went out into the moonlight to walk over to the guns, and, such is the
      nature of this country, though the journey was only 200 yards, I lost
      myself. Everything that was once a landmark is levelled flat&mdash;there's
      nothing but shell-holes covered with tangled grass, barbed wire, exploded
      shell-cases, and graves. I can quite understand how men have wandered
      clean across No Man's Land and found themselves the guests of the
      Hun.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think I once mentioned the man we have cooking for our mess at present&mdash;how
      he was no good as a cook until he got word that his wife had been drowned
      in Canada; his grief seemed to give him a new pride in himself and since
      his disaster our meals have been excellent. This morning I found a curious
      document on my table, which ran as follows: &ldquo;Sir, I kan't cock
      without stuf to cock with.&rdquo; I was at a loss to discover its meaning
      for some time. Why couldn't he cock? Why should he want to cock? How
      does one cock? And whether he could or couldn't cock, why should he
      worry me about it?
    </p>
    <p>
      Then the widower presented himself, standing sooty and forlorn in the
      trench outside the mess. The mystery was cleared up.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mess-cart is just up, and I'm going to send this off, that it
      may reach you a day earlier.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July 23</i>, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m sitting
      in my &ldquo;summer-house&rdquo; in the trench. One side is unwalled and
      exposed to the weather; a curtain of camouflage stretches over the front
      and disguises the fact that I am &ldquo;in residence.&rdquo; For the last
      twenty-four hours it's been raining like mad, blowing a hurricane
      and thundering as though all the clouds had a sneezing fit at once. You
      can imagine the state of the trenches and my own drowned condition when I
      returned to the battery this morning from my tour of duty up front. It
      seems hardly credible that in so short a time mud could become so muddy.
      However, I usually manage to enjoy myself. Yesterday while at the O.P. I
      read a ripping book by &ldquo;Q.&rdquo; with almost&mdash;not quite&mdash;the
      Thomas Hardy touch. It was called <i>The Ship of Stars</i>, and was
      published in 1899. Where it fails, when compared with Hardy, is in the
      thinness of its story and unreality of its plot. It has all the characters
      for a titanic drama, but having created them, &ldquo;Q.&rdquo; is afraid
      to let them be the brutes they would have been. How many novelists have
      failed through their determination to be quite gentlemanly, when merely to
      have been men would have made them famous! If ever I have a chance again I
      shall depict men as I have seen them out here&mdash;animals, capable of
      animal lusts, who have angels living in their hearts.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-day has the complete autumn touch; we begin to think of the coming
      winter with its drenched and sullen melancholy&mdash;its days and nights
      of chill and damp, telescoping one into another in a grey monotony of
      grimness. Each summer the troops have told themselves, &ldquo;We have
      spent our last winter in France,&rdquo; but always and always there has
      been another.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yet rain and mud and melancholy have their romance&mdash;they lend a
      blurred appearance of timelessness to a landscape and to life itself. A
      few nights ago I was forward observing for a raid which we put on. The
      usual panic of flares went up as the enemy became aware that our chaps
      were through his wire. Then machine guns started ticking like ten thousand
      lunatic clocks and of a sudden the S.O.S. barrage came down. One watched
      and waited, sending back orders and messages, trying to judge by signs how
      affairs were going. Gradually the clamour died away, and night became as
      silent and dark as ever. One waited anxiously for definite word; had our
      chaps gained what they were after, or had they walked into a baited trap?
    </p>
    <p>
      Two hours elapsed; then through the loneliness one heard the lagging tramp
      of tired men, which came nearer and drew level. You saw them snowed on by
      the waning moon as they passed. You saw their rounded shoulders and the
      fatness of their heads&mdash;you knew that they were German prisoners.
      Limping in the rear, one arm flung about a comrade's neck, came our
      wounded. Just towards dawn the dead went by, lying with an air of complete
      rest upon their stretchers. It was like a Greek procession, frescoed on
      the mournful streak of vagueness which divides eternal darkness from the
      land of living men. Just so, patiently and uncomplainingly has all the
      world since Adam followed its appointed fate into the fold of
      unknowingness. We climb the hill and are lost to sight in the dawn. There's
      majesty in our departure after so much puny violence.
    </p>
    <p>
      And God&mdash;He says nothing, though we all pray to Him. He alone among
      monarchs has taken no sides in this war. I like to think that the Union
      Jack waves above His palace and that His angels are dressed in khaki&mdash;which
      is quite absurd. I think of the irresistible British Tommies who have
      &ldquo;gone west,&rdquo; as whistling &ldquo;Tipperary&rdquo; in the
      streets of the New Jerusalem. They have haloes round their steel helmets
      and they've thrown away their gas-masks. But God gives me no licence
      for such imaginings, for He hasn't said a word since the first
      cannon boomed. In some moods one gets the idea that He's
      contemptuous; in others, that He takes no sides because His children are
      on both sides of No Man's Land. But in the darkest moments we know
      beyond dispute that it is His hands that make our hands strong and His
      heart that makes our hearts compassionate to endure. I have tried to
      inflame my heart with hatred, but I cannot. Hunnishness I would give my
      life to exterminate, but for the individual German I am sorry&mdash;sorry
      as for a murderer who has to be executed. I am determined, however, that
      he shall be executed. They are all apologists for the crimes that have
      been committed; the civilians, who have not actually murdered, are guilty
      of thieving life to the extent of having received and applauded the stolen
      goods.
    </p>
    <p>
      We had a heated discussion to-day as to when the war would be ended; we
      were all of the opinion, &ldquo;Not soon. Not in less than two years,
      anyway. After that it will take another twelve months to ship us home.&rdquo;
      I believe that, and yet I hope. Along all the roads of France, in all the
      trenches, in every gun-pit you can hear one song being sung by poilus and
      Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they
      march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully-beef and
      hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from
      gramophones in hidden dug-outs:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      &ldquo;Over there. Over there.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Send the word, send the word over there,
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      That the Yanks are coming&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      Men repeat that rag-time promise as though it were a prayer, &ldquo;The
      Yanks are coming.&rdquo; We could have won without the Yanks&mdash;we're
      sure of that. Still, we're glad they're coming and we walk
      jauntily. We may die before the promise is sufficiently fulfilled to tell.
      What does that matter? The Yanks are coming. We shall not have died in
      vain. They will reap the peace for the world which our blood has sown.
    </p>
    <p>
      To-night you are in that high mountain place. It's three in the
      afternoon with you. I wish I could project myself across the world and
      stand beside you. Life's running away and there is so much to do
      besides killing people. But all those things, however splendid they were
      in achievement, would be shameful in the attempting until the war is
      ended.
    </p>
    <p>
      Between writing this I've been making out the lines for the guns and
      running out to fire them&mdash;so forgive anything that is disjointed.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July 29</i>, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> have just had a
      very large batch of letters to read. I feel simply overwhelmed with people's
      affection. I have to spend every moment of my leisure keeping up with my
      mighty correspondence. The mail very rarely brings me a bag which is
      totally empty. The American Red Cross in Paris keeps me in mind
      continually. I had thirty gramophone records and twelve razors from them
      the other day, together with a pressing invitation to get a French leave
      and spend it in Paris. But your letters bulk much larger in numbers than
      any that I receive from anywhere else. I always leave home-letters to the
      last&mdash;bread and butter first, cake last, is my rule.
    </p>
    <p>
      I must apologize for the slackness of my correspondence for the past few
      days, but two of them were spent forward while taking part in a raid, and
      the third at the observing post. It rained pretty nearly all the time and
      sleep was not plentiful. Yesterday I spent in &ldquo;pounding my ear&rdquo;
      for hours; to-day I'm as fresh as a daisy and writing reams to you
      to make up for lost time.
    </p>
    <p>
      You'll be sorry to hear that a favourite little chap of mine has
      been seriously wounded and may be dead by now. A year ago, at the Vimy
      show, he did yeoman service, and I got him recommended for the Military
      Medal. He was my runner on the famous day. He's been in all sorts of
      attacks for over three years, and at last a stray shell got him. It burst
      about ten feet away, wounding him in the head, arm, and knee, besides
      nearly cutting off a great toe. His name was Joy. He lived up to his name,
      and was carried out on the stretcher grim, but bravely smiling. You can't
      dodge your fate; it searches you out. You wonder&mdash;not fearfully, but
      curiously&mdash;whose turn it will be next. For yourself you don't
      much care; your regrets are for the others who are left. Still, don't
      you think that I'm going west, I have an instinct that I shall last
      to the end.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think I mentioned the pathetic note of the mess cook, which I found
      awaiting me one morning on the breakfast table: &ldquo;I kan't cock
      without stuf to cock with.&rdquo; The history of our experiments in cooks
      would make a novel in itself. The man before the pathetic beggar was a
      miner in peace times; as a cook his meals were like charges of dynamite&mdash;they
      blasted our insides. The worst of them was that they were so deceptive,
      they looked innocent enough till it was too late to refuse them. You may
      lay it down as final that all cooks are the dirtiest men in any unit. The
      gentleman who couldn't &ldquo;cock&rdquo; earned for himself the
      title of the &ldquo;World's Champion Long Distance Dirt Accumulator.&rdquo;
      I was present when the O.C. discharged him. He sent for the man, and was
      stooping forward, doing up his boot, when he entered. The man looked like
      the wrath of God&mdash;as though he had been embracing all the denizens of
      Hell. Without looking up the O.C. commenced, &ldquo;Where did you learn to
      prepare all these tasty meals you've been serving us?&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I kan't cock without&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;I know you can't cock,&rdquo; said the O.C. tartly; &ldquo;you
      can't even keep yourself clean. All you know how to do is to waste
      good food. I'm sending you down to the wagon-lines, and if you're
      not washed by guard-mounting, I've given orders to have you thrown
      into the horse-trough.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      Exit the &ldquo;cock.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      Your letters mean so much to me. I feel that my returns are totally
      inadequate. Good-bye; some great news has come in and the major wants to
      discuss it.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>July</i> 30,1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m writing
      to you to-day, because I may be out of touch for a few days, as it looks
      as though I was going to get my desire&mdash;the thing I came back for.
      Any time if my letters stop temporarily, don't get nervous. Such
      things happen when one is on active service.
    </p>
    <p>
      It's about two years to-day since I landed in England for the first
      time in khaki; since then how one has changed! I can scarcely recognise
      myself at all. It's difficult to believe that I'm the same
      person. Without exaggeration, the world has become to me a much jollier
      place because of this martial experience. I don't know how it is
      with you, but my heart has grown wings. One has changed in so many ways&mdash;the
      things that once caused panic, he now welcomes. Nothing gives us more joy
      than the news that we're to be shoved into a great offensive. It's
      for each of us as though we had been invited to our own wedding. Danger,
      which we used to dodge, now allures us.
    </p>
    <p>
      I read a very true article the other day on the things which we have lost
      through the war. We have lost our youth, many of us. We have foregone so
      many glorious springs&mdash;all the seasons have sunk their tones into the
      sombre brown-grey mud of the past four years. We have lost all our
      festivals of affection and emotion. Sundays, Christmases, Easters&mdash;they
      are all the same as other days&mdash;so many hours useful only for the
      further killing of men. &ldquo;You will say,&rdquo; writes my author,
      &ldquo;that the war, after all, will not last for ever, and that the man
      and woman of average longevity will live through threescore-and-ten years
      of God's wonderful springs. That to a very minor extent is true. The
      war will not last for ever; but the memory of it, the suffering of it, the
      incalculable waste of it, will last for all that remains of our lives&mdash;which
      is 'for ever,' after all, so far as you and I are concerned.&rdquo;
      He goes on to say that there are years and years&mdash;but the years in
      which a man and woman may know that they are alive are few&mdash;the years
      of love and of beauty.
    </p>
    <p>
      I agree with all this writer says; his words voice an ache that is always
      in our hearts. But he forgets&mdash;life, love, youth and even beauty are
      not everything. The animals have them. What we have gained is a new
      standard of worth, which we have won at the expense of our bodies. To me
      that outweighs all that we have lost. I spoke to you in a previous letter
      of the divine discontent which goads us on, so that when we have attained
      a standard of which we never thought ourselves capable, we envy a new and
      nobler goal, and commence to race towards it. In one of Q.'. books I
      came across a verse which expresses this exactly:
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      &ldquo;Oh that I were where I would be!
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      Then would I be where I am not.
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      But where I am there I must be;
    </p>
    <p class="indent15">
      And where I would be, I can not.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      Discontented, ungrateful creatures we are! And yet there is nobility in
      our discontent.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the way, over the doorway of my O.P. is chalked this sound advice&mdash;&ldquo;Do
      unto Fritzie as he doth unto you. But do it first.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 13, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> haven't
      seen a paper for nearly a fortnight, so don't know what news of the
      Front has been published and can risk telling you nothing. Suffice it to
      say that I'm having the most choice experience that I've had
      since I took up soldiering. We are winged persons&mdash;the body is
      nothing; to use Homer's phrase, &ldquo;our souls rush out before us.&rdquo;
      This is the top-notch of life; there was nothing like it before in all the
      ages. We triumph; we each individually contribute to the triumph, and,
      though our bodies are tired, our hearts are elated. We'll win the
      war for you and bring peace back; even the most dreary pessimist must
      believe that now.
    </p>
    <p>
      I try to keep notes of the tremendous tragedies and glories which I
      witness hour by hour, so that one day I can paint the picture for you as
      it happened. All day I am reminded of that motto of the Gesta Romanorum,
      &ldquo;What I spent, I had; what I saved, I lost; what I gave, I have.&rdquo;
      So many men have given in this war&mdash;given in the sense of giving all.
      I think it must be true of them wherever they are now, that they <i>have</i>
      in proportion to their sacrifice. It should be written on the white
      crosses above all our soldiers, &ldquo;<i>What He Gave, He Has</i>.&rdquo;
      What we are trying to give is heaven to the world; it is just that those
      who fall should receive heaven in return.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 14, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> am writing to you
      in a lull&mdash;I may not have another opportunity for days. In a battle
      one has no transport for conveying letters&mdash;only for ammunition,
      wounded, and supplies. I'm stunningly well and bronzed. The weather
      is royal and tropical and, best of all, the Hun's tail is down while
      ours is pointing heavenwards. One of my gunners was complaining this
      morning that it was &ldquo;a hell of a war.&rdquo; It was the smell of
      dead cavalry horses that nauseated him. Another gunner cheered him up,
      &ldquo;Where's the use of complaining, Bill? It's the only war
      we have.&rdquo; That's the spirit of our men. It may be a hell of a
      war, but it's the only one we have, so we may as well grin and make
      the best of it. In the past few days I have seen more than in all my
      former experience. I can visualize Waterloo now&mdash;and the last trump:
      the hosts of death deploying before my eyes. That one still walks the
      earth seems wonderful. God is very lenient.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there is nothing to fear in death&mdash;only the thing that is left is
      horrible&mdash;and how horrible! But the things that are left are not us&mdash;we
      have pushed onwards to God.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>August</i> 15, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> keep on dropping
      you little notes to let you know that everything is all right with me. It
      makes me very happy to hear from you; it always does, but more so than
      ever nowadays.
    </p>
    <p>
      You remember R.? A few days ago he was killed. He was just ahead of me,
      riding up the road. I did not see his face, but recognized his square-set
      figure and divisional patches. He's not had much of a run for his
      money, poor chap. It was his first show, but he died game.
    </p>
    <p>
      How much longer have we got to go? It's like a long, long walk, with
      no milestones, towards an unknown destination. If we only knew how much
      farther our goal lay, it would be easier. I dreamed last night of
      Kootenay, all green and cool and somnolent. It was rest, rest, rest. One
      gazed through the apple-trees to the quiet lake and felt happy in the too
      much beauty. But please don't worry about me.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXX
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 17, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'m in the
      support trenches to-night carrying on with the infantry. This is my third
      day and I am relieved to-morrow. Yesterday I had a gorgeous spree which I
      will tell you about some day. I was out in front of our infantry in an
      attack, scouting for the enemy. This war may be boring at times, but its
      great moments hold thrills which you could find nowhere else. It may sound
      mad, but it's extraordinary fun to be chased by enemy machine-gun
      bullets. I've recently had fun of every kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Once again death is a familiar sight&mdash;tired bodies lying in the
      August sunshine. In places where men once were, birds are the only
      inhabitants remaining.
    </p>
    <p>
      In this hole in the ground where I am sitting I found a copy of the New
      York <i>Times</i> for 30th June, with the first advertisement of <i>Out to
      Win</i>. Less than thirty hours ago the Hun was sitting here and making
      himself quite comfortable. I wonder if he was the owner of the New York <i>Times</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      I was relieved last night, and had a difficult walk back to the battery.
      There were several letters from you all awaiting me. How tired I was you
      may judge when I tell you that I fell asleep without reading them. For the
      first time in a fortnight I had my breeches off last night. Up forward one
      got drenched with sweat by day and lay sodden and itchy on the damp ground
      by night. But don't think we weren't cheerful&mdash;we were
      immensely happy. There's no game in the world like pushing back the
      Hun. I had another example of how we treat our prisoners. A young officer
      came in captive while I was shaving. &ldquo;How long before we win?&rdquo;
      I asked him. &ldquo;<i>We</i> are going to vin,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;If
      not, vhy because?&rdquo; Our Tommies started kidding him. &ldquo;Say,
      beau, you don't look much like winning now.&rdquo; And then they
      offered him water and food, although we were short ourselves and his whole
      deportment was insolent.
    </p>
    <p>
      During an attack, while I was within 200 yards of the advanced post and
      pinned under a barrage, a Canadian Tommy wormed his way towards me.
      &ldquo;Say, sir, are you hungry? Have some maple sugar and cake?&rdquo;
      Was I hungry! He had received a parcel from Canada the night before which
      he had taken with him into the attack. There, amongst whizz-bangs and
      exploding five-nines, we feasted together, washing it all down with water
      from the bottle of a neighbouring dead Hun.
    </p>
    <p>
      You can't beat chaps who joke, think of home, go forward, and find
      time to love their enemies under shell-fire. They're extraordinary
      and as normal as the air.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXI
    </h3>
    <p>
      France <i>August</i> 20, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>o-day I have spent
      some time in composing recommendations for decorations for two of my
      signallers who were with me in my latest show. One of the lucky fellows
      came straight out of the death and racket to find his Blighty
      leave-warrant waiting for him. Not that I really envy him, for I wouldn't
      leave the Front at this moment if there were twenty leave-warrants offered
      to me. I suppose I'm a little mad about the war.
    </p>
    <p>
      I'm still very tired from my last adventure and am limping about
      with very sore feet&mdash;but I'm very happy. I begin to feel that
      we're drawing to the end of the war. The Hun knows now that the jig
      is up. He was going to have defeated us this summer while the Americans
      were still preparing&mdash;instead of that we're pushing him back. I
      don't think he will gain another square yard of France. From now on
      he must go back and back.
    </p>
    <p>
      This moving battle has been a grand experience; it enables you to see
      everything unfolding like a picture&mdash;tanks, cavalry, infantry, guns.
      The long marches were very wearying, and we were always pushing on again
      before we were rested. Not that we minded&mdash;the game was too big. The
      first day of the attack I sailed out into the blue alone, following up the
      Hun. I had the huge felicity of firing at his retreating back over open
      sights at a range of less than 1000 yards. We pushed so far that night
      that we got in front of our infantry and were turned back by enemy
      machine-gun fire. The Hun is a champion runner when he starts to go and
      difficult to keep up with. However, we caught him up several times after
      that and helped him to hurry a bit faster. I never saw anything finer in
      my life than the clouds of cavalry mustering&mdash;the way the horses
      showed their courage and never budged for shell-fire set an example to us
      men. The destruction burst in the midst of them, but they stood like
      statues till the order was given to advance. Then away they went, like a
      whirlwind of death, with the artillery following at the trot and coming
      into action point-blank. I came across one machine-gun emplacement that a
      horseman had charged. The horse lay dead on top of the emplacement, having
      smothered the machine gunner out of action. That day when I was off by
      myself with my two guns, I fed my horses on the oats of the fallen cavalry
      and my men on the rations in the haversacks of the dead. In the ripe wheat
      the dying stared at us with uninterested eyes as we passed. The infantry
      going cheering by when we were firing, waved their hands to us, shouting,
      &ldquo;That's the stuff, boys. Give 'em hell!&rdquo; We gave
      them hell, right enough.
    </p>
    <p>
      I've come through without a scratch and now I'm off to bed.
      Don't worry if I don't write you&mdash;it's impossible
      sometimes, and I'll always cable through London as soon as I can.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 22,1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> can't sleep
      to-night. It's nearly one. The candle lights up the mud walls and
      makes the other occupants of my dug-out look contorted and grotesque. They
      sigh and toss in their dreams. Now an arm is thrown out and a face is
      turned. They've been through it, all of them, in the past few days.
      They have a haggard look. And somewhere in shell-holes, wheatfields,
      woods, they lie to-night&mdash;those others. Pain no longer touches them&mdash;their
      limbs have ceased to twitch and their breath is quiet. They have given
      their all. For them the war is finished&mdash;they can give no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      Do people at home at all realize what our men are doing and have done?
      Coarse men, foulmouthed men&mdash;men whose best act in life is their
      manner in saying good-bye to it. And then there are the high-principled
      fellows from whom ideals are naturally to be expected&mdash;whatever we
      are, we all go out in the same way and in the same rush of determined
      glory. We climb the steep ascent of Heaven through peril, toil, and pain&mdash;and
      at last our spirits are cleansed.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think continually of the mothers who stand behind these armies of
      millions. Mothers just like my mother, with the same hopes and ambitions
      for their sons. Poor mothers, they never forget the time when the hands
      that smite to-day were too strengthless to do more than grope at the
      breast. They follow us like ghosts; I seem to see their thoughts like a
      grey mist trailing behind and across our strewn battlefields. When the
      rain descends upon our dead, it is their tears that are falling. The
      whispering of the wheat is like the tiptoe rustling of approaching women.
    </p>
    <p>
      Pray for us; we need your prayers&mdash;need them more than you think,
      perhaps. Tuck us up in our scooped-out holes with your love, the way you
      used to before we began to adventure. Above all be proud of us, whether we
      stand or fall&mdash;so proud that you will not fret. God will let us be
      little again for you in Heaven. We shall again reach up our arms to you,
      relying on your strength. We shall be afraid and cry out for your comfort.
      We're not brave&mdash;not brave naturally; we shall want you in
      Heaven to tell us we are safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      So many thoughts and pictures come to me to-night. One is of a ravine I
      was in a few days ago, all my men mounted and waiting to move forward.
      Wounded horses of the enemy are limping through the grass. German wagons,
      caught by our shell-fire, stand silent, the drivers frozen to the seats
      with a terrifying look of amazement on their faces, their jaws loose and
      their bodies sagging. Others lie twisted in the grass&mdash;some in
      delirium, some watching. We shall need all our water before the day is
      over, and have no time to help them. Besides, our own dead are in sight
      and a cold anger is in our heart. The stretcher-bearers will be along
      presently&mdash;time enough for mercy when the battle is won! We ourselves
      may be dead before the sun has set. I know the anger of war now, the way I
      never did in the trenches. You can see your own killing. You can also see
      the enemy's work. And yet, through it all down come our wounded,
      supported by the wounded Huns.
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;Those chaps are very good to you,&rdquo; one of our officers said.
      The Tommy grinned. &ldquo;They have to be. If they weren't, I'd
      let the daylight into them. I've a pocketful of bombs, and they know
      it.&rdquo; Well, that's one incentive to friendship, however
      reluctant.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Huns are brave&mdash;I know that now. They endure tests of pluck that
      are well-nigh incredible. We are not defeating craven curs. I can think of
      no one braver than the man who stays behind with a machine gun, fighting a
      rearguard action and covering his comrades' road to freedom. He
      knows that he will receive no quarter from our people and will never live
      to be thanked by his own. His lot is to die alone, hated by the last human
      being who watches him. They're brave men; they cease fighting only
      when they're dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      What a contrast between love and hatred&mdash;dreaming of our mothers to
      the last and smashing the sons of other mothers. That's war!
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 22, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am lying
      flat on my tummy in the grass and spying on the enemy 2000 yards away. I
      shall be here for twenty-four hours. There's no sort of cover and
      the sun is scalding. Luckily we've found water in a captured village
      near by and I sent our linesmen to refill our bottles. There's a
      lull for the moment and we stretch ourselves out in weary contentment The
      body is a traitor to the spirit&mdash;it can become very tired.
    </p>
    <p>
      I begin to see the end of the war. I can feel it coming as I never did
      before since I struck France. The unbelievable truth begins to dawn on me
      that we'll be coming back to you&mdash;that we shall wake up one
      morning to find that the world has no further use for our bombs and
      bayonets. Strange! After so much killing, to kill will be again a crime.
      We shall begin to count our lives in years instead of in days.
    </p>
    <p>
      How will the pictures one's memory holds seem then? I can see, as I
      saw the other day, a huge German lying on the edge of a wheatfield. His
      knees were arched. He was on his back. His head rolled wearily from side
      to side. The thing that fixed my attention was a rubber groundsheet flung
      hastily across his stomach, whether in disgust or pity, I cannot say. I
      had my guns drawn up in column, my men mounted, all ready to trot into
      action&mdash;so I had no time for compassion or curiosity. But from my
      saddle I saw an infantryman raise the ground-sheet and underneath there
      was nothing but a scarlet gap. There were many sights like that that day.
      There have been many since then. I have seen as many parts of the human
      body that the beautiful white skin tents, as a student of anatomy. What
      hatred and injustice has preceded the making possible of such acts!
    </p>
    <p>
      But in these places where horrors have been committed, the birds still
      flit about their nests. When the tanks and the cavalry and the guns have
      pushed forward, Nature returns to her task of beautifying the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      How I would like to sit down and talk with you all. When the war is over I
      can see us going away to some quiet place and re-living the past and
      re-building the future with words. I may see you sooner than either of us
      expect; there's always the chance of a Blighty. So far, beyond an
      attack of trench-fever from which I've almost recovered, I've
      come through scatheless.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the time this reaches you I shall be looking forward to leave.
      Casualties have thinned out the numbers on the leave-list and I stand
      fairly high now. I ought to see England again in October.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXIV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>August</i> 30,1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is only a
      brief note to say that all is well with me and to ask you not to worry. It's
      two years to-morrow since I first saw the Front&mdash;two centuries it
      seems. I'm different inside. I don't know whether my outside
      has changed much&mdash;but I wish sometimes that I could be back again. I
      begin to be a little afraid that I shan't be recognizable when I
      return.
    </p>
    <p>
      The journalists have been very free in their descriptions of our doings&mdash;they
      have told you everything. If I told a tithe, my letter would not reach
      you.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXV
    </h3>
    <p>
      France
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>September</i> 1, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>his is just
      another little note to let you know that I am safe and well. I am allowed
      to say so little to you; that's one of the worst penalties of this
      war&mdash;the silence. Yesterday your cable, sent in reply to mine and
      forwarded from London, arrived. My only chance of relieving your suspense
      when I have not been able to write for some time, is to get one of my
      English friends to cable to you.
    </p>
    <p>
      Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He's got his V.C. for
      saving life under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty
      times. I remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the
      war. They all laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane
      pilot. They didn't try to join themselves, but his keenness struck
      them as funny. What could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they
      asked&mdash;a man who ran his launch into logs on the lake, and who
      crashed in full daylight when approaching a wharf? When he had been
      awarded his flying certificate at the American Air School our R.F.C.
      refused to take him. He tried to get into the infantry, into everything,
      anything, and was universally turned down on the score of weak sight. His
      quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile. Then, by a careless
      chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was put on to a motor
      launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything solid that came
      his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it wasn't
      his eyesight and limitations that really counted&mdash;it was his
      keenness. In two years he's a V.C., a D.S.O., and a
      Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war he was the kind of chap with whom
      girls danced out of kindness To-day he's a hero.
    </p>
    <p>
      We were discussing him out here the other day; he's the type of hero
      this war has produced&mdash;a man not strong physically, a man
      self-depreciating and shy, a man with grave limitations and very conscious
      of his difference from other men. This was his chance to approve himself.
      People laughed that he should offer himself as a fighter at all, but he
      elbowed his way through their laughter to self-conquest. That's the
      grand side of war&mdash;its test of internals, of the heart and spirit of
      a man! bone and muscle and charm are only secondary.
    </p>
    <p>
      The big things one sees done out here&mdash;done in the way of duty&mdash;and
      so quietly! Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the
      personal suffering worth while&mdash;for one hour of living to know that
      you have played the man and saved a fellow-creature's life. One
      never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly
      and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a
      lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result.
    </p>
    <p>
      And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses&mdash;the suffering
      of horses and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent,
      smashed forms carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy
      men among whom a shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead
      the sky is blue and the wind blows happily through the sunshine. &ldquo;Gone
      west&rdquo;&mdash;that's all, to the land of departing suns. Some of
      us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of France. In either event we
      are fortunate in having been given the privilege to serve our kind.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXVI
    </h3>
    <p>
      Prince of Wales Hospital, London, <i>September</i> 6, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ere I am once
      again in a clean white bed with the discreet feet of nurses, like those of
      nuns, making hardly any sound as they pass up and down the corridor. There's
      just one other officer in my room. His leg is full of machine-gun bullets,
      and, like myself, he's just arrived from France. I've not got
      used to this new security yet, this right to live, this ordered decency&mdash;all
      of which seems to be summed up in the presence of women. Less than three
      days ago I saw two of my gun-teams scuppered by shellfire and the horses
      rolling among the wounded men. I can't get the sight out of my mind.
      To be alive seems an unfair advantage I have taken.&mdash;And all the time
      I want to be back in the thick of it. It was so glorious&mdash;such a bon
      little war, as we say out there, while it lasted.
    </p>
    <p>
      You'll want to know what happened. On 2nd September at dawn we set
      out as the point of the attacking wedge to hammer our way to Cambrai. You
      will have read this, and more than this, already in your papers. After we
      had fired on the barrage for several hours, and our infantry had advanced,
      we began to move our battery forward by sections. The major was away on
      leave to Blighty, so the captain was acting O.C. He went forward to
      observe and reconnoitre; I was left to move up the battery. My own section
      was the last to move. On the road I was met by a mounted orderly who
      handed me a written order to join another battery which was doing forward
      work on opportunity targets. I reported to this battery and had brought my
      two guns into position on their right flank, when the first shell burst.
      The gun-teams had not unhooked; it burst directly under the centre team
      and scuppered the lot, wounding all the drivers and killing one of the
      gunners. We had got the guns into action, when another shell burst beside
      the left-hand gun, near which I was standing, wounding all the gun-crew
      except one man. I myself got a piece in the head, between the ear and the
      left temple. It was a lucky chance that I wasn't killed outright.
      The fragment of shell struck upwards and under my steel helmet, cutting
      the chin-strap and the brass link which holds the strap to the helmet. It
      was diverted by a rivet in the strap, so instead of going straight into my
      head, it glanced along the skull. I was X-rayed in France and was to have
      been operated on, but there was no time with so many casualties coming
      down, so I was sent to England for the operation. I was in luck to escape
      so lightly. I was so grateful to my helmet that I hid it in my trench coat
      and smuggled it back to England with me as a curiosity&mdash;which is not
      allowed.
    </p>
    <p>
      But to return to my story. After the second shell had caught us and others
      were popping all about us, I made up my mind that the enemy had a direct
      line on us. I have since been told that he put on a strong counter-attack
      and bent our line back for a time, so that our artillery were very near up
      and it's likely that he could observe us. I sent back for my teams
      after we had carried out our wounded, intending to drag the guns out
      farther to the right flank. Another gun-team was scuppered and all my
      gunners were knocked out but three men. The enemy now started to pay
      attention to my ammunition wagons, putting one shell straight in among the
      lot of them, so I had to leave the guns for the moment and get my wagons
      away. I then rode forward to where the other guns of my battery were in
      action and found that they had escaped casualties, so arranged to bring my
      guns in beside them. About an hour and a half after I was hit I went to an
      advance aid-post to have my head dressed. It was just a pile of stretchers
      and bandages in a ditch&mdash;the living under cover in the ditch, the
      dead lying out on top; here a doctor and four Red Cross orderlies were
      working in silence. I was ordered to report at the next post back for an
      anti-tetanus injection, so I got on my horse and rode. At the next post
      they had no anti-tetanus, so I was put on a lorry and driven back to
      Arras. From there I went to the Casualty Clearing Station, where I was
      dressed and got two hours' sleep&mdash;from there I travelled on the
      Red Cross train to the Base, arriving at 6 a.m., only eighteen hours from
      the time that I was in the fighting. The hospital I went to was the Number
      20 General&mdash;the same one that I was in last year. That same morning I
      was X-rayed and starved all day in preparation for an operation which did
      not happen. In the evening I was warned for Blighty, but it was the midday
      of 4th September before I got on the train for the port of embarkation.
      The journey was rather long, for I did not reach Liverpool Street till two
      in the morning. Yesterday, as soon as I woke up, I sent you a cable. In
      the afternoon Mr. W. came to see me and is coming again to-day. I left the
      Front without a bit of kit, so my first S.O.S. was for a pair of pyjamas.
      Having studied the colour of my eyes and consulted with his lady-clerks,
      W. sent me a suit of baby blue silk ones with thin white stripes in them&mdash;so
      now I am ready to receive ladies.
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>3 p.m.</i> I was X-rayed, and there is a splinter between the scalp and
      skull. Whether the skull is fractured I don't know; I think not,
      however, as I feel too well. What a contrast lying here in the quiet after
      so many night marches, so much secrecy, such tiger pounces forward in the
      dawn, such agony and courage and death. There were wounded men hobbling
      seven miles from the Drocourt-Quéant line where I was hit, to the hospital
      at Arras. The roads were packed with transports&mdash;ammunition,
      pontoons, rations&mdash;streaming forward, gunners and infantry marching
      up to the carnage with eager faces, passing the back-going traffic which
      was a scarlet tide of blood. It was worth living for&mdash;worth doing&mdash;that
      busting of the Hindenburg Line. I hope to be patched up in two months, so
      that I may be in on the final rush to the Rhine. I've only been out
      of the fighting three days and I want to be in it again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Don't worry about me at all. I'm all right and brown and
      strong. Thank God I'm not dead yet and shall be able to fight again.
    </p>
    <p>
      Note.&mdash;<i>Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson was wounded on 2nd September in
      the attack on the Quéant-Drocourt Line, when the magnificent fighting of
      the Canadians broke the Hindenburg Line. The above letter describes that
      attack and the manner in which he got his wound.</i>
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXVII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>September</i> 8, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve returned
      from this offensive with a very healthy hatred of the Hun. One of our
      tanks, commanded by a boy of twenty, got too far ahead and was captured.
      When the rest of the attacking line caught up, they found him stripped
      naked and bound to his tank&mdash;dead. The brutes had bombed him to death
      mother-naked. When I tell you that no prisoners were taken for the next
      twenty-four hours, I think you'll applaud and wonder why the
      twenty-four hours wasn't extended. The men said they got sick of the
      killing.
    </p>
    <p>
      Why we're decent to these vermin at all amazes me, until I remember
      that I also am decent to them. I think the reason is that originally we
      set out to be good sportsmen and are ashamed of being forced into hatred.
      All the way down the line the German wounded received precisely the same
      treatment as our own men&mdash;and treatment that was just as prompt. At
      the Casualty Clearing Station, German officers sat at table with us and no
      difference was made. On the Red Cross train they were given beds in our
      carriage and our English sisters waited on them. I thought of how the
      German nurses treat our chaps, spitting into the food and the cups before
      they hand them to them. Every now and then you would see a wounded
      Canadian hop up the carriage and offer them cigarettes. They sat stiffly
      and insolently, with absurd yellow gloves on, looking as though every
      kindness shown was a national tribute to their superiority. There were so
      many of us that at night two had to lie on beds made for one. The Germans
      refused; they wanted a bed apiece. When they were told they would have to
      sit up if they would not share, they said they would sit up. Then the
      sister came along to investigate the disturbance. They eyed her with their
      obstinate pig-eyes, as though daring her to touch them. She told them that
      if they wanted to sit up all night they would have to do it in the
      corridor, as they prevented the bed above them from being pulled down. At
      the end of fifteen minutes they decided to share a bed as all of us had
      been doing, but they muttered and grumbled all night. There were a good
      many of us who wished for a Mills bomb and an open field in which to teach
      them manners. It seems to me that the German is incorrigible. He was born
      a boor and he can never respond to courtesy. Kindness and mercy are lost
      upon him; he accepts them as his right and becomes domineering. If any
      peacemaker thinks that Christian forbearance and magnanimity will make for
      a new brotherhood when peace terms are formulated, he is vastly mistaken.
      The German is a bully, and the only leadership that he acknowledges and
      the only righteousness to which he bows, is the leadership and the armed
      force of a bully stronger than himself. Sentimental leniency on the part
      of the Allies will only make him swell out his chest afresh.
    </p>
    <p>
      You may have seen the account of a booby-trap which the Huns left behind&mdash;a
      crucified kitten. They banked on the humanity of our chaps to release the
      little beast; but the moment the first nail was drawn it exploded a mine
      which killed our Tommies. In contrast to this is an incident which
      occurred the night before our attack on the Hindenburg Line. A hare,
      frightened by shell-fire, came panting through our gun-position. Some of
      the fellows gave chase, till at last one fell on it and caught it. It
      started to cry like a baby in a heartrending sort of way. We hadn't
      had very much meat, and the intention in catching it had been to put it in
      the pot; but there was no one who could face up to killing it&mdash;so it
      was petted and set free again in the wheat. Queer tender-heartedness on
      the part of men who next morning were going to kill their kind! Their
      concern when the little beast began to sob was conscience-stricken and
      ludicrous.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXVIII
    </h3>
    <p>
      London
    </p>
    <p>
      <i>September</i> 12, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>'ve a great
      piece of news for you. It's exceedingly likely that I shall visit
      the States on the British Mission. This must read to you like moonshine&mdash;but
      it's a quite plausible fact. I shall not be allowed to go back to
      the Front for three months, as it will probably be that time before I am
      pronounced fit for active service. It is suggested that during that time I
      come to the States to speak on Anglo-American relations. I feel very loath
      to postpone my return to the Front by a single day, and would only do so
      if I were quite sure that I should not be fit for active service again
      before the winter settles down, when the attack will end. I don't
      want to miss an hour of the great offensive. If I agree to come to the
      States, I shall only do it on the pledge that I am sent straight back to
      France on my return. This would give me a right to speak to Americans as
      nothing else would. I could not speak of the war unless I was returning to
      it. I owe the Lord a death for every life of my men's that has been
      taken&mdash;and I want to get back to where I can pay the debt. But wouldn't
      it be ripping to have a few weeks all together again? Can't I
      picture myself in my little study at the top of the house and in my old
      bedroom! I may even manage a Christmas with you!
    </p>
    <p>
      Having had my wound dressed and having togged myself up in my new uniform,
      I jumped into the inevitable taxi and went to lunch at the Ritz with some
      of the visiting American editors. It was delightfully refreshing to listen
      to Charlie Towne's, the editor of McClure's, wild enthusiasm
      for the courageous high spirits of England. &ldquo;The streets are dark at
      night,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but in the people's hearts there is
      more light than ever.&rdquo; Two stories were told, illuminatingly true,
      of the way in which the average Englishman carries on. There was an
      officer who had had an eye shot out; the cavity was filled with an
      artificial one. Towne felt a profound pity for him, but at the same time
      he was rather surprised to see that the chap wore a monocle in the eye
      that was sightless. At last he plucked up courage to ask him what was the
      object of the monocle. The chap smiled drolly. &ldquo;I do it for a rag,&rdquo;
      he said; &ldquo;it makes me look more funny.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      A Canadian Tommy, without any legs, was being wheeled down a station
      platform. Another wounded Tommy called out to him, &ldquo;You're not
      on the staff, Bill. Why don't yer get out and walk?&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      &ldquo;'Cause I'm as good as a dook now,&rdquo; the chap
      replied; &ldquo;for the rest of me life I'm a kerridge gent.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      The thing that seems to have impressed these American visitors most of all
      is the way in which our soldiers make adversity appear comic by their
      triumphant capacity for mockery.
    </p>
    <p>
      Towne, being a lover of poetry, was terrifically keen to visit Goldsmith's
      grave. I hadn't the foggiest idea where it was, but after lunch we
      set out in search of it. At last we found it in a shady backwater of the
      Inner Temple&mdash;a simple slab on which the only inscription was the
      name, &ldquo;Oliver Goldsmith.&rdquo; I know of only one parallel to this
      for illustrious brevity; a gravestone in Paris, from which even the
      Christian name is omitted and on which the solitary word &ldquo;Heine&rdquo;
      is written. I liked to see the poet from Broadway bare his head as he
      stood by the long-dead English poet's grave. Behind us in the Temple
      chapel the confident soprano of boys' voices soared. It was a
      grey-blue day, made tawny for brave moments by fugitive stabs of sunshine.
      Lime trees dappled the cold courtyard with shadows; leaves drifted down
      like gilded largesse. Old men, with dimming eyes and stooped backs,
      shuffled from stairway to stairway, carrying heavy ledgers. The rumble of
      Fleet Street reached us comfortingly, like the sound of distant surf on an
      unseen shore. My thoughts wrenched themselves free from the scenes of
      blood and struggle in which I participated less than two weeks ago. Here,
      in that simple inscription, was the symbol of the one quality which
      survives Time's erasures&mdash;character which loved and won love
      intensely.
    </p>
    <p>
      Queer letters you get from me! I write the way I feel from London or the
      battlefield. My room-mate is lying in bed, his poor shattered leg propped
      up on a pillow and a cheery smile about his lips. In the well of the
      hospital someone is playing&mdash;playing love-songs as though there were
      no war. The music, muted by distance, drifts in to me through the open
      window. I feel that life is mine again; I can hope. At the Front to hope
      too much was to court disappointment. To be alive is thrilling and
      delicious.
    </p>
    <h3>
      LXXIX
    </h3>
    <p>
      London <i>October</i> 6, 1918
    </p>
    <p class="pfirst">
      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is Sunday
      morning. As I write the newsboys in the Strand are calling an
      extra-special. Before entering the Savoy for lunch I purchased a copy,
      which I read as I sat in the great gold and crimson lounge while I waited
      for a table. You know what the Savoy is like, crowded with actresses,
      would-be-taken-for actresses, officers on leave, chaps hobbling out of
      hospitals like myself, and a sprinkling of Jews with huge noses and a
      magnificent disregard for the fact that they are not in khaki. The
      orchestra was being kept up to the right pitch of frenzy in their efforts
      by a gentleman who is reported to get in more extra beats to the minute
      than any other person of his colour in London. The feet of the girls
      tripped into an unconscious one-step as they entered, as though they acted
      independently of their owners. At the end of the rather pompous hall, with
      its false air of being too respectable for naughtiness, lay the terrace
      and beyond that the Thames, benevolent and drowsy in the October sunshine.
      Everything was gay and normal as though nothing except the war had
      happened or would ever happen. I should like Berlin to have seen us&mdash;Berlin
      which waited breathless for the detonation of the latest Big Bertha which
      she had fired on the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      I opened my paper. Across the top of it, in one-inch type headlines, ran
      the message:
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
    </p>
    <h3>
      GERMANY PLEADS FOR PEACE
    </h3>
    <p>
      I am sorry to have to disappoint Germany, but the truth is I didn't
      blink an eyelid or turn a hair. I was scarcely mildly interested. I gazed
      round the crowd; their eyelids had not blinked and their hair had not
      turned. The Kaiser's Big Bertha of peace had not roused them; she
      must have fired a dud. Everyone looked quite contented and animated, as if
      the war was going to last for ever.
    </p>
    <p>
      My eye slipped down the two columns of close printing in which the mercy
      of the All Highest was revealed to the world. I learnt that the All
      Highest's new Imperial Chancellor was celebrating his new office by
      playing a little trick on his own credulity; he was pretending that by
      Christmas Germany would have sponged out all her debts of infamy with
      words. Prince Max of Baden was in such a hurry to bring good-will upon
      earth that he had cabled to President Wilson proposals for a lasting
      peace; he had gone to this trouble and expense not because of anything
      that was happening on the Western Front, but solely &ldquo;in the
      interests of suffering humanity.&rdquo; Glancing at a parallel column I
      read words which would have led me to doubt the sincerity of any one less
      august: &ldquo;Germans Defeated in All-day Battle. Tanks do Great
      Execution among Hun Infantry. 1000 Prisoners Taken.&rdquo;
    </p>
    <p>
      Then I turned back to see what this spokesman of a nation of humanitarians
      had to say for himself. I learnt that Germany had always been keen on the
      League of Nations: that she was anxious, as she had always been anxious,
      to rehabilitate Belgium; that her armies were still invincible, and that
      the Western Front was still unbroken; that the Kaiser was God's
      latest revelation of His own perfection and His magnanimous shadow upon
      earth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Liars! Blasphemous liars! How can one treat with a nation which has not
      even the sense to make its shamming decent and plausible? On the Western
      Front to-day in their ignominious retreat the Germans are showing their
      ancient ferocity for destruction. I know, for I have just come from before
      Cambrai. Cities are being levelled before they make their exit; civilian
      populations are being carried away captive; trains piled high with loot
      precede their departure; they leave behind them the desolation of death.
      While with &ldquo;incomparable heroism&rdquo; their armies are executing
      these brutalities, their Chancellor recalls us to a lost humanity and
      presupposes that we shall accept his professions at their face value.
    </p>
    <p>
      I looked up from my paper at the Sunday crowd, chatting gaily as it passed
      through gaudy splendours into lunch. They were amazingly unmoved by
      anything that the German Chancellor had said. So far as their attitude
      betrayed them, he might never have become Chancellor. If I may state the
      case colloquially, they didn't care a damn. There were American
      officers newly landed, men with the Mons ribbon, who had been in the game
      from the crack of the first gun, wounded Johnnies like myself, wearing the
      blue armlet which denotes that you are still in hospital. One and all were
      seizing this jolly moment before they again caught sight of the trenches
      and carried on with pounding the Hun. They weren't going to spoil
      their leisure by discussing the perturbations of a German Chancellor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Peace! For the Hun there shall be no peace. For him, for the next hundred
      years, whether we fight him or guard the wall which we shall build about
      him, there will be no peace. We, who have seen the mud of France grow red
      with blood as if with poppy petals, will never forget. That we die is
      nothing, provided always that two German lives pay for our death. Beyond
      the Rhine, Germany lies intact; her towns are still snug and smiling. One
      journeys to them through a hundred miles of rotting corpses&mdash;the
      corpses of men who were our friends; yet the Imperial Chancellor appeals
      to our humanity and reminds us of mercy.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mercy! While I have been in hospital several batches of returned British
      prisoners have arrived. I have sat at table with them, seen their
      neglected wounds, and talked to them. One officer, in addition to his
      battlefield wound, has a face horribly disfigured. I scarcely know how to
      describe it. His jaw has been broken; his entire face has been pushed to
      one side. It was done by the butt of a Hun rifle in a prison hospital in
      Germany; an orderly woke him up by smashing his face in one morning as he
      lay in bed. You may say that this was the act of one man and cannot justly
      be taken as representative of a nation. The time has long gone by for such
      generous discriminations; in four years of warfare these ferocious
      cruelties have been too frequent and organized for their odium to be borne
      by individual men. When Germany speaks of mercy it is as though a
      condemned murderer on the scaffold appealed for his reprieve on the
      grounds of Christ's commandment, &ldquo;Love thy neighbour as
      thyself.&rdquo; Bullies grow fluent at quoting scripture only when they
      feel the rope about their necks; their use of scripture phrases at the
      eleventh hour is proof of cowardice&mdash;not of repentance.
    </p>
    <p>
      Judas, the front-rank assassin of all times, set an example in decency
      which it would behove Germany to follow, when he went out into the garden
      and hanged himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      There will be sentimentalists among the Allies who will speak of
      forgiveness and softer judgments. Their motives will be mixed and many:
      some will be camouflaged pacifists; some will be influenced by personal
      advantages, such as relations, business affiliations and financial
      investments in Germany; some will be war-weary mothers and wives who will
      pounce on the first opportunity of regaining their remaining men. None of
      them will be the men who have done the fighting. Germany has turned to the
      American President as the intercessor for Peace; the men at the Front look
      to America to back them up in exacting the final penalty&mdash;they look
      to America above all the other Allies for firmness for the reason that she
      is not war-weary, and because millions of her men who are in khaki have
      yet to prove their manhood to themselves. America beyond all Germany's
      adversaries came into the war on indisputably righteous grounds: we look
      to her to insist on a meticulously righteous settlement. In the face of
      the enormities which have been perpetrated by the Hun armies from the
      first violation of Belgium's neutrality up to now, no vengeance
      could be made adequate. The entire history of Germany's method of
      making war is one of an increasing ingenuity in devising new methods of
      making nations suffer while withholding the release of death. The
      ravishing of women, the shooting of old men, the sending of the girlhood
      of occupied territories into the shame of unwilling prostitution, the
      wholesale destruction of all virtues that make life decent and desirable
      cannot be exacted as part of our penalty; but the extermination of the
      arch-culprits who have educated their human instruments out of manhood
      into bestiality can. If the Kaiser and the herd of human minotaurs who
      surround him escape the gallows, justice becomes a travesty and there is
      no murderer, however diabolical his atrocities, who deserves to be
      electrocuted.
    </p>
    <p>
      With the turning of the tide in the Allies' favour the voice of
      France is already making itself heard on the side of the argument for
      vengeance. Whoever forgets, France has her landscapes billowed into mire
      by shells, her gallant cities converted into monstrous blots of brick and
      dirt, always to remind her. She is demanding that for every French city
      laid low, a German city, when the day of settlement comes, shall suffer an
      equal nemesis. For these crimes against civilian rights and properties,
      Germany has no martial motive. They are wanton and carried out by
      organized incendiaries among her retreating armies, having no provocation
      of battle to excuse them. Moreover, as Dr. Hugh Bellot, the eminent
      International lawyer, has pointed out, Germany has condemned herself out
      of her own mouth. In her treatment, for instance, of such a city as St.
      Quentin, she commits three separate crimes against International law.
      First, against the person of the civilian; second, against the rights of
      movable property; third, against the rights of public and private
      property. In her own military manual, known as the <i>German War Book</i>,
      and regarded as her official guide for military conduct until this present
      war, she lays down that &ldquo;the devastation of occupied territory,
      destruction of property, carrying away of inhabitants into bondage or
      captivity, and the right of plundering private property, formerly
      permitted, can no longer be entertained. The inhabitants are no longer to
      be regarded, generally speaking, as enemies, and are not to be molested in
      life, limb, honour or freedom.&rdquo; Furthermore it states that &ldquo;every
      insult, every disturbance against the domestic peace, every attack on
      family honour and morality, every unlawful and outrageous attack or act of
      violence, are just as strictly punishable as though they had been
      committed against the inhabitants of one's own land.&rdquo; There is
      not a single one of the above rulings that Germany is not violating at
      this moment in her enforced withdrawal from France; and it is at this time
      that her Chancellor appeals for peace in &ldquo;the interests of suffering
      humanity.&rdquo; Magnanimity! It is a fine, large-sounding word and one
      which it would be a disgrace to lose from our vocabulary; yet it is a word
      capable of much abuse if employed in our peace dealings with the enemy.
      The day for magnanimity has long gone by; in being magnanimous we are
      unjust to both our future generations and our valiant dead. There are
      deeds of such vileness and treachery that they put nations, equally with
      individuals, outside the pale of all possible magnanimity. For four years
      Germany has figured in history as a self-applauded assassin. While the
      rôle seemed to pay her, she gloried in her ruthlessness. She succeeded too
      well both on sea and land ever to persuade us that defeat has made her
      heart more tender. The only peace terms will be a carefully audited
      reckoning of all the happiness and innocence that she has strangled. That
      this may be accomplished the man at the Front is willing to go on risking
      life and sanity for twice four years, if need be: in the certainty that it
      will be accomplished, he will die without regret.
    </p>
    <p>
      We British and men of the Dominions did not always feel this way. When we
      entered the war we determined to remain gentlemen whatever happened. We
      weren't going to be vulgar and lose our tempers; we weren't
      going to be un-sportsmanly and learn to hate. Though dirty tricks were
      played on us, we would still play fair. Our code of honour demanded it.
      There should be no retaliation. Then came the Germans' employment of
      gas, his flame attacks, his submarining of merchantmen, his bombing of
      hospitals and civilian towns. You can't play fair with an enemy who
      flies the flag of truce that he may shoot you in the back. Tit for tat was
      the only code of honour which came within the comprehension of such a
      ruffian. It took three years for us to stoop to the bombing of the Rhine
      towns. The wisdom of the step has been proved; the children of London now
      sleep safely in their beds. In my opinion, at least in as far as the
      British armies are concerned, the success of the present offensive has
      just one meaning: after four years of gallant smiling our soldiers have
      attained a righteous anger&mdash;a determination to exact a just revenge.
      They no longer make lenient discriminations between Germany and her
      rulers. They know now that the breath of every individual German is
      tainted with the odour of carnage. What makes our anger more bitter is the
      shame that Germany should have forced us to stoop to hatred as a weapon.
      But there is only one safe principle upon which to act in dealing with
      Germany, whether in fighting her or making peace with her: With whatever
      measure she metes, it should be measured to her again. Brute force is the
      only reasoning she understands.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Imperial Chancellor has appealed for peace &ldquo;in the interest of
      suffering humanity.&rdquo; Even in his cry for mercy he speaks
      vaingloriously, boasting of the &ldquo;incomparable heroism&rdquo; of his
      mob of brutes who have made humanity suffer.
    </p>
    <p>
      In not one line of his appeal is there a hint of polite regret. By the
      time you read this letter, this particular peace overture will be ancient
      history, but there will be many more of them, each one more sentimental
      and frantic as our armies batter their way nearer to Germany's
      complacent smiling towns. As these peace overtures arrive, as they will
      almost daily, there is a saying of Richard Hooker's which I wish
      every American would repeat night and morning as a vow and prayer. It is a
      saying which was in my mind on the dawn of 8th August, when we sailed out
      into the morning mist on the great Amiens attack. It is a saying which was
      unconsciously in the mind of every British soldier; its stern
      righteousness explains our altered attitude and the Cromwellian strength
      with which we strike. &ldquo;Lord, I owe thee a death,&rdquo; said Richard
      Hooker. Whether we be soldiers or civilians, we each one owe the Lord a
      Hun death for the accumulated horror that has taken place. Such
      blasphemies against God's handiwork cannot be wiped out with words.
      To make peace before the Hun has paid his righteous debt, is to shorten
      God's right arm and to make sacrifice seem trivial. We are not
      fighting to crush individuals or nations, but against a strongly fortified
      vileness and to prove that righteousness still triumphs in the world. If
      at the first whimpering our hearts are touched and we allow the evil to
      escape its punishment, it will sneak off with a cunning leer about its
      mouth to lick its wounds into health that it may take a future generation
      unawares. Mercy at this juncture would be spiritual slovenliness. God has
      given the Allies a task to accomplish; He has made us His avengers that,
      when our work is ended, He may create a new heaven upon earth.
    </p>
    <div style="height: 6em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
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