Carry On

By LieutenantConingsbyDawson

CARRY ON

[Illustration: Lieutenant Coningsby DawsonCanadian Field Artillery]

CARRY ON

LETTERS IN WAR TIME

BY

CONINGSBY DAWSON

NOVELIST AND SOLDIER

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY HIS FATHER, W. J. DAWSON

FRONTISPIECE

1917

 WHEN THE WAR'S AT AN END

 At length when the war's at an end And we're just ourselves, --you and I, And we gather our lives up to mend, We, who've learned how to live and to die:

 Shall we think of the old ambition For riches, or how to grow wise, When, like Lazarus freshly arisen, We've the presence of Death in our eyes?

 Shall we dream of our old life's passion, -- To toil for our heart's desire, Whose souls War has taken to fashion With molten death and with fire?

 I think we shall crave the laughter Of the wind through trees gold with the sun, When our strife is all finished, --after The carnage of War is done. 

 Just these things will then seem worth while:-- How to make Life more wondrously sweet; How to live with a song and a smile, How to lay our lives at Love's feet. 

 ERIC P. DAWSON, _Sub. Lieut_. R. N. V. R. 

INTRODUCTION

The letters in this volume were not written for publication. They areintimate and personal in a high degree. They would not now be publishedby those to whom they are addressed, had they not come to feel that thespirit and temper of the writer might do something to strengthen andinvigorate those who, like himself, are called on to make greatsacrifices for high causes and solemn duties. 

They do not profess to give any new information about the militaryoperations of the Allies; this is the task of the publicist, and at alltimes is forbidden to the soldier in the field. Here and there somestriking or significant fact has been allowed to pass the censor; butthe value of the letters does not lie in these things. It is foundrather in the record of how the dreadful yet heroic realities of waraffect an unusually sensitive mind, long trained in moral and romanticidealism; the process by which this mind adapts itself to unanticipatedand incredible conditions, to acts and duties which lie close to horror, and are only saved from being horrible by the efficacy of the spiritualeffort which they evoke. Hating the brutalities of War, clearlyperceiving the wide range of its cruelties, yet the heart of the writeris never hardened by its daily commerce with death; it is purified bypity and terror, by heroism and sacrifice, until the whole nature seemsfresh annealed into a finer strength. 

The intimate nature of these letters makes it necessary to say somethingabout the writer. 

Coningsby Dawson graduated with honours in history from Oxford in 1905, and in the same year came to the United States with the intention oftaking a theological course at Union Seminary. After a year at theSeminary he reached the conclusion that his true lifework lay inliterature, and he at once began to fit himself for his vocation. In themeantime his family left England, and we had made our home in Taunton, Massachusetts. Here, in a quiet house, amid lawns and leafy elms, hegave himself with indefatigable ardour to the art of writing. He wrotefrom seven to ten hours a day, producing many poems, short stories, andthree novels. Few writers have ever worked harder to attain literaryexcellence, or have practised a more austere devotion to their art. Ioften marvelled how a young man, fresh from a brilliant career at thegreatest of English Universities, could be content with a life that wasso widely separated from association with men and affairs. I wonderedstill more at the patience with which he endured the rebuffs that alwaysawait the beginner in literature, and the humility with which he waswilling to learn the hard lessons of his apprenticeship in literaryform. The secret lay, no doubt, in his secure sense of a vocation, andhis belief that good work could not fail in the end to justify itself. But, not the less, these four years of obscure drudgery wore upon hisspirit, and hence some of the references in these letters to his days ofself-despising. The period of waiting came to an end at last with thepublication in 1913 of his _Garden Without Walls_, which attainedimmediate success. When he speaks in these letters of his brief burst offame, he refers to those crowded months in the Fall of 1913, when hisnovel was being discussed on every hand, and, for the first time, he metmany writers of established reputation as an equal. 

Another novel, _The Raft_, followed _The Garden Without Walls_. Thenature of his life now seemed fixed. To the task of novel-writing he hadbrought a temperament highly idealistic and romantic, a fresh and vividimagination, and a thorough literary equipment. His life, as he plannedit, held but one purpose for him, outside the warmth and tenacity ofits affections--the triumph of the efficient purpose in the adequateexpression of his mind in literature. The austerity of his long years ofpreparation had left him relatively indifferent to the common prizes oflife, though they had done nothing to lessen his intense joy in life. His whole mind was concentrated on his art. His adventures would be theadventures of the mind in search of ampler modes of expression. Hiscrusades would be the crusades of the spirit in search of the realitiesof truth. He had received the public recognition which gave him faith inhimself and faith in his ability to achieve the reputation of the trueartist, whose work is not cheapened but dignified and broadened bysuccess. So he read the future, and so his critics read it for him. Andthen, sudden and unheralded, there broke on this quiet life ofintellectual devotion the great storm of 1914. The guns that roaredalong the Marne shattered all his purposes, and left him face to facewith a solemn spiritual exigency which admitted no equivocation. 

At first, in common with multitudes more experienced than himself, hedid not fully comprehend the true measure of the cataclysm which hadoverwhelmed the world. There had been wars before, and they had beenfought out by standing armies. It was incredible that any war shouldlast more than a few months. Again and again the world had been assuredthat war would break down with its own weight, that no war could befinanced beyond a certain brief period, that the very nature of modernwarfare, with its terrible engines of destruction, made swift decisionsa necessity. The conception of a British War which involved the entiremanhood of the nation was new, and unparalleled in past history. And thefurther conception of a war so vast in its issues that it reallythreatened the very existence of the nation was new too. Alarmists hadsometimes predicted these things, but they had been disbelieved. Historians had used such phrases of long past struggles, but often as amode of rhetoric rather than as the expression of exact truth. Yet, in avery few weeks, it became evident that not alone England, but the entirefabric of liberal civilisation was threatened by a power that knew nohonour, no restraints of either caution or magnanimity, no ethic but thearmed might that trampled under blood-stained feet all the things whichthe common sanction of centuries held dearest and fairest. 

Perhaps, if Coningsby had been resident in England, these realities ofthe situation would have been immediately apparent. Residing inAmerica, the real outlines of the struggle were a little dimmed bydistance. Nevertheless, from the very first he saw clearly where hisduty lay. He could not enlist immediately. He was bound in honour tofulfil various literary obligations. His latest book, _Slaves ofFreedom_, was in process of being adapted for serial use, and itspublication would follow. He set the completion of this work as theperiod when he must enlist; working on with difficult self-restrainttoward the appointed hour. If he had regrets for a career broken at thevery point where it had reached success and was assured of more thancompetence, he never expressed them. His one regret was the effect ofhis enlistment on those most closely bound to him by affections whichhad been deepened and made more tender by the sense of common exile. Atlast the hour came when he was free to follow the imperative call ofpatriotic duty. He went to Ottawa, saw Sir Sam Hughes, and was offered acommission in the Canadian Field Artillery on the completion of histraining at the Royal Military College, at Kingston, Ontario. The lastweeks of his training were passed at the military camp of Petewawa onthe Ottawa River. There his family was able to meet him in the July of1916. While we were with him he was selected, with twenty-four otherofficers, for immediate service in France; and at the same time his twoyounger brothers enlisted in the Naval Patrol, then being recruited inCanada by Commander Armstrong. 

The letters in this volume commence with his departure from Ottawa. Weekby week they have come, with occasional interruptions; mud stainedepistles, written in pencil, in dug-outs by the light of a singlecandle, in the brief moments snatched from hard and perilous duties. They give no hint of where he was on the far-flung battle-line. We knownow that he was at Albert, at Thiepval, at Courcelette, and at thetaking of the Regina trench, where, unknown to him, one of his cousinsfell in the heroic charge of the Canadian infantry. His constantthoughtfulness for those who were left at home is manifest in all hewrites. It has been expressed also in other ways, dear and precious toremember: in flowers delivered by his order from the battlefield eachSabbath morning at our house in Newark, in cables of birthdaycongratulations, which arrived on the exact date. Nothing has beenforgotten that could alleviate the loneliness of our separation, orstimulate our courage, or make us conscious of the unbroken bond oflove. 

The general point of view in these letters is, I think, adequatelyexpressed in the phrase "_Carry On_, " which I have used as the title ofthis book. It was our happy lot to meet Coningsby in London in theJanuary of the present year, when he was granted ten days' leave. In thecourse of conversation one night he laid emphasis on the fact that he, and those who served with him, were, after all, not professionalsoldiers, but civilians at war. They did not love war, and when the warwas ended not five per cent of them would remain in the army. They weremen who had left professions and vocations which still engaged the bestparts of their minds, and would return to them when the hour came. Warwas for them an occupation, not a vocation. Yet they had provedthemselves, one and all, splendid soldiers, bearing the greatesthardships without complaint, and facing wounds and death with a gaycourage which had made the Canadian forces famous even among a host ofmen, equally brave and heroic. The secret of their fortitude lay in theone brief phrase, "Carry On. " Their fortitude was of the spirit ratherthan the nerves. They were aware of the solemn ideals of justice, liberty, and righteousness for which they fought, and would never giveup till they were won. In the completeness of their surrender to a greatcause they had been lifted out of themselves to a new plane of livingby the transformation of their spirit. It was the dogged indomitabledrive of spiritual forces controlling bodily forces. Living or dyingthose forces would prevail. They would carry on to the end, however longthe war, and would count no sacrifice too great to assure its triumph. 

This is the spirit which breathes through these letters. The splendourof war, as my son puts it, is in nothing external; it is all in thesouls of the men. "There's a marvellous grandeur about all this carnageand desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they have to, inorder to survive. " "Every man I have met out here has the amazing gutsto wear his crown of thorns as though it were a cap-and-bells. " Theyhave shredded off their weaknesses, and attained that "corporatestout-heartedness" which is "the acme of what Aristotle meant byvirtue. " For himself, he discovers that the plague of his former modesof life lay in self-distrust. It was the disease of the age. The doubtof many things which it were wisdom to believe had ended in the doubt ofone's own capacity for heroism. All those doubts and self-despisings hadvanished in the supreme surrender to sacrificial duty. The doors of theKingdom of Heroism were flung so wide that the meanest might enter in, and in that act the humblest became comrades of Drake's men, who couldjest as they died. No one knows his real strength till it is put to thetest; the highest joy of life is to discover that the soul can meet thetest, and survive it. 

The Somme battlefield, from which all these letters were despatched, isan Inferno much more terrible than any Dante pictured. It is a vast seaof mud, full of the unburied dead, pitted and pock-marked byshell-holes, treeless and horseless, "the abomination of desolation. "And the men who toil across it look more like outcasts of the LondonEmbankment than soldiers. "They're loaded down like pack-animals, theirshoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go on and goon.... There's no flash of sword or splendour of uniforms. They're onlyvery tired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired menwho can never again pass an insurance test. " Yet they carry on--the"broken counter-jumper, the ragged ex-plumber, " the clerk from theoffice, the man from the farm; Londoner, Canadian, Australian, NewZealander, men drawn from every quarter of the Empire, who daily justifytheir manhood by devotion to an ideal and by contempt of death. And inthe heart of each there is a settled conviction that the cause for whichthey have sacrificed so much must triumph. They have no illusions aboutan early peace. They see their comrades fall, and say quietly, "He'sgone West. " They do heroic things daily, which in a lesser war wouldhave won the Victoria Cross, but in this war are commonplaces. They knowthemselves re-born in soul, and are dimly aware that the world istravailing toward new birth with them. They are still very human, menwho end their letters with a row of crosses which stand for kisses. Theyare not dehumanised by war; the kindliness and tenderness of theirnatures are unspoiled by all their daily traffic in horror. But theyhave won their souls; and when the days of peace return these men willtake with them to the civilian life a tonic strength and nobleness whichwill arrest and extirpate the decadence of society with the saving saltof valour and of faith. 

It may be said also that they do not hate their foe, although they hatethe things for which he fights. They are fighting a clean fight, withmen whose courage they respect. A German prisoner who comes into theBritish camp is sure of good treatment. He is neither starved norinsulted. His captors share with him cheerfully their rations and theirlittle luxuries. Sometimes a sullen brute will spit in the face of hiscaptor when he offers him a cigarette; he is always an officer, never aprivate. And occasionally between these fighting hosts there are acts ofmagnanimity which stand out illumined against the dark background ofdeath and suffering. One of the stories told me by my son illustratesthis. During one fierce engagement a British officer saw a Germanofficer impaled on the barbed wire, writhing in anguish. The fire wasdreadful, yet he still hung there unscathed. At length the Britishofficer could stand it no longer. He said quietly, "I can't bear to lookat that poor chap any longer. " So he went out under the hail of shell, released him, took him on his shoulders and carried him to the Germantrench. The firing ceased. Both sides watched the act with wonder. Thenthe Commander in the German trench came forward, took from his own bosomthe Iron Cross, and pinned it on the breast of the British officer. Suchan episode is true to the holiest ideals of chivalry; and it is all themore welcome because the German record is stained by so many acts ofbarbarism, which the world cannot forgive. 

This magnanimous attitude toward the enemy is very apparent in theseletters. The man whose mind is filled with great ideals of sacrifice andduty has no room for the narrowness of hate. He can pity a foe whosesufferings exceed his own, and the more so because he knows that hisfoe is doomed. The British troops do know this to-day by many infalliblesigns. In the early days of the war untrained men, poorly equipped withguns, were pitted against the best trained troops in Europe. The firstCanadian armies were sacrificed, as was that immortal army of Imperialtroops who saved the day at Mons. The Canadians often perished in thatearly fighting by the excess of their own reckless bravery. They arestill the most daring fighters in the British army, but they haveprofited by the hard discipline of the past. They know now that theyhave not only the will to conquer, but the means of conquest. Their, artillery has become conspicuous for its efficiency. It is the ceaselessartillery fire which has turned the issue of the war for the Britishforces. The work of the infantry is beyond praise. They "go over thetop" with superb courage, and all who have seen them are ready to saywith my son, "I'm hats off to the infantry. " And in this finalefficiency, surpassing all that could have been thought possible in theearlier stages of the war, the British forces read the clear augury ofvictory. The war will be won by the Allied armies; not only because theyfight for the better cause, which counts for much, in spite ofNapoleon's cynical saying that "God is on the side of the strongestbattalions"; but because at last they have superiority in equipment, discipline and efficiency. Upon that shell-torn Western front, amid themud and carnage of the Somme, there has been slowly forged the weaponwhich will drive the Teuton enemy across the Rhine, and give back toEurope and the world unhindered liberty and enduring peace. 

W. J. DAWSON. 

March, 1917. 

THE LETTERS

In order to make some of the allusions in these letters clear I will setdown briefly the circumstances which explain them, and supply anarrative link where it may be required. 

I have already mentioned the Military Camp at Petewawa, on the Ottawariver. The Camp is situated about seven miles from Pembroke. The Ottawariver is at this point a beautiful lake. Immediately opposite the Campis a little summer hotel of the simplest description. It was at thishotel that my wife, my daughter, and myself stayed in the early days ofJuly, 1916. 

The hotel was full of the wives of the officers stationed in the Camp. During the daytime I was the only man among the guests. About fiveo'clock in the afternoon the officers from the Camp began to arrive on aprimitive motor ferryboat. My son came over each day, and we oftenvisited him at the Camp. His long training at Kingston had been verysevere. It included besides the various classes which he attended agreat deal of hard exercise, long rides or foot marches over frozenroads before breakfast, and so forth. After this strenuous winter theCamp at Petewawa was a delightful change. His tent stood on a bluff, commanding an exquisite view of the broad stretch of water, diversifiedby many small islands. We had a great deal of swimming in the lake, andseveral motor-boat excursions to its beautiful upper reaches. Oneafternoon when we went over in our launch to meet him at the Camp wharf, he told us that that day a General had come from Ottawa to ask fortwenty-five picked officers to supply the casualties among the CanadianField Artillery at the front. He had immediately volunteered and beenaccepted. 

At this time my two younger sons, who had joined us at Petewawa in orderto see their brother, enrolled themselves in the Royal Naval MotorPatrol Service, and had to return to Nelson, British Columbia, to settletheir affairs. Near Nelson, on the Kootenay Lake, we have a large fruitranch, managed by my second son, Reginald. My youngest son, Eric, waswith a law-firm in Nelson, and had just passed his final examinations assolicitor and barrister. 

This ranch had played a great part in our lives. The scenery is amongthe finest in British Columbia. We usually spent our summers there, finding not only continual interest in the development of our orchards, but a great deal of pleasure in riding, swimming, and boating. We hadoften talked of building a modern house there, but had never done so. The original "little shack" was the work of Reginald's own hands, in thedays when most of the ranch was primeval forest. It had been added to, but was still of the simplest description. One reason why we had notbuilt a modern house was that this "little shack" had become muchendeared to us by association and memory. We were all together theremore than once, and Coningsby had written a great deal there. We builtlater on a sort of summer library--a big room on the edge of a beautifulravine--to which reference is made in later letters. Some of thehappiest days of our lives were spent in these lovely surroundings, andthe memory of those blue summer days, amid the fragrance of miles ofpine-forest, often recurs to Coningsby as he writes from the mud-wastesof the Somme. 

We left Petewawa to go to the ranch before Coningsby sailed for England, that we might get our other two sons ready for their journey to England. They left us on August 21st, and the ranch was sub-let to Chinamen inthe end of September, when we returned to Newark, New Jersey. 

CARRY ON

I

OTTAWA, July 16th, 1916. 

DEAREST ALL:

So much has happened since last I saw you that it's difficult to knowwhere to start. On Thursday, after lunch, I got the news that we were toentrain from Petewawa next Friday morning. I at once put in for leave togo to Ottawa the next day until the following Thursday at reveille. Wecame here with a lot of the other officers who are going over and havebeen having a very full time. 

I am sailing from a port unknown on board the _Olympic_ with 6, 000troops--there is to be a big convoy. I feel more than ever I did--andI'm sure it's a feeling that you share since visiting the camp--that Iam setting out on a Crusade from which it would have been impossible towithhold myself with honour. I go quite gladly and contentedly, and praythat in God's good time we may all sit again in the little shack atKootenay and listen to the rustling of the orchard outside. It will beof those summer days that I shall be thinking all the time. 

 Yours, with very much love, CON. 

II

HALIFAX, July 23rd. 

MY DEAR ONES:

We've spent all morning on the dock, seeing to our baggage, and havejust got leave ashore for two hours. We have had letters handed to ussaying that on no account are we to mention anything concerning ourpassage overseas, neither are we allowed to cable our arrival from theother side until four clear days have elapsed. 

You are thinking of me this quiet Sunday morning at the ranch, and I ofyou. And I am wishing--As I wish, I stop and ask myself, "Would I bethere if I could have my choice?" And I remember those lines ofEmerson's which you quoted:

 "Though love repine and reason chafe, There comes a voice without reply, 'Twere man's perdition to be safe, When for the Truth he ought to die. "

I wouldn't turn back if I could, but my heart cries out against "thevoice which speaks without reply. "

Things are growing deeper with me in all sorts of ways. Familyaffections stand out so desirably and vivid, like meadows green afterrain. And religion means more. The love of a few dear human people andthe love of the divine people out of sight, are all that one has to leanon in the graver hours of life. I hope I come back again--I very muchhope I come back again; there are so many finer things that I could dowith the rest of my days--bigger things. But if by any chance I shouldcross the seas to stay, you'll know that that also will be right and asbig as anything that I could do with life, and something that you'll beable to be just as proud about as if I had lived to fulfil all yourother dear hopes for me. I don't suppose I shall talk of this again. ButI wanted you to know that underneath all the lightness and ambitionthere's something that I learnt years ago in Highbury[1]. I've become alittle child again in God's hands, with full confidence in His love andwisdom, and a growing trust that whatever He decides for me will be bestand kindest. 

[Footnote 1: We resided over thirteen years at Highbury, London, N. , during my pastorate of the Highbury Quadrant Congregational Church. ]

This is the last letter I shall be able to send to you before the otherboys follow me. Keep brave, dear ones, for all our sakes; don't let anyof us turn cowards whatever ultimately happens. We've a tradition tolive up to now that we have become a family of soldiers and sailors. 

I shall long for the time when you come over to England. Where will ourmeeting be and when? Perhaps the war may be ended and then won't you beglad that we dared all this sorrow of good-byes?

 God bless and keep you, CON. 

III

ON BOARD, July 27th, 1916. 

My VERY DEAR PEOPLE:

Here we are scooting along across the same old Atlantic we've crossed somany times on journeys of pleasure. I'm at a loss to make my lettersinteresting, as we are allowed to say little concerning the voyage andeverything is censored. 

There are men on board who are going back to the trenches for the secondtime. One of them is a captain in the Princess Pat's, who is badlyscarred in his neck and cheek and thighs, and has been in Canadarecuperating. There is also a young flying chap who has also seenservice. They are all such boys and so plucky in the face of certainknowledge. 

This morning I woke up thinking of our motor-tour of two years ago inEngland, and especially of our first evening at The Three Cups inDorset. I feel like running down there to see it all again if I get anyleave on landing. How strange it will be to go back to Highbury againlike this! The little boy who ran back and forth to school down ParadiseRow little thought of the person who to-day masquerades as his elderself. 

Heigho! I wish I could tell you a lot of things that I'm not allowed to. This letter would be much more interesting then. 

In seventeen days the boys will also have left you--so this will arrivewhen you're horribly lonely. I'm so sorry for you dear people--but I'dbe sorrier for you if we were all with you. If I were a father ormother, I'd rather have my sons dead than see them failing when thesupreme sacrifice was called for. I marvel all the time at the prosaicand even coarse types of men who have risen to the greatness of theoccasion. And there's not a man aboard who would have chosen the jobahead of him. One man here used to pay other people to kill his pigsbecause he couldn't endure the cruelty of doing it himself. And nowhe's going to kill men. And he's a sample. I wonder if there is a LordGod of Battles--or is he only an invention of man and an excuse forman's own actions. 

Monday. 

We are just in--safely arrived in spite of everything. I hope you had noscare reports of our having been sunk--such reports often get about whena big troop ship is on the way. 

I'm baggage master for my draft, and have to get on deck now. You'llhave a long letter from me soon. 

 Good-bye, Yours ever, Con. 

IV

SHORNCLIFF, August 19th, 1916. 

MY DEARESTS:

We haven't had any hint of what is going to happen to us--whether FieldArtillery, the Heavies or trench mortars. There seems little doubt thatwe are to be in England for a little while taking special courses. 

I read father's letter yesterday. You are very brave--you never thoughtthat you would be the father of a soldier and sailors; and, as you say, there's a kind of tradition about the way in which the fathers ofsoldiers and sailors should act. Confess--aren't you more honestly happyto be our father as we are now than as we were? I know quite well youare, in spite of the loneliness and heartache. We've all been forcedinto a heroism of which we did not think ourselves capable. We've beencarried up to the Calvary of the world where it is expedient that a fewmen should suffer that all the generations to come may be better. 

I understand in a dim way all that you suffer--the sudden divorce of allthat we had hoped for from the present--the ceaseless questionings as towhat lies ahead. Your end of the business is the worse. For me, I can goforward steadily because of the greatness of the glory. I never thoughtto have the chance to suffer in my body for other men. The insufficiencyof merely setting nobilities down on paper is finished. How unreal Iseem to myself! Can it be true that I am here and you are in the stillaloofness of the Rockies? I think the multitude of my changes hasblunted my perceptions. I trudge along like a traveller between highhedgerows; my heart is blinkered so that I am scarcely aware oflandscapes. My thoughts are always with you--I make calculations for thedifferences of time that I may follow more accurately your doings. I'dlove to come down to the study summer-house and watch the blueness ofthe lake with you--I love those scenes and memories more than any in theworld. 

 Good-bye for the present. Be brave. 

 Yours, Con. 

V

SHORNCLIFF, August 19th, 1916. 

MY DEARS:

It's not quite three weeks to-day since I came to England, and it seemsages. The first week was spent on leave, the second I passed my exams ingun drill and gun-laying, and this week I have finished my riding. NextMonday I start on my gunnery. 

Do you remember Captain S. At the Camp? I had his young brother todinner with me last night-he's just back from France minus an eye. Helasted three and a half weeks, and was buried four feet deep by a shell. He's a jolly boy, as cheerful as you could want and is very goodcompany. He gave me a vivid description. He had a great boy-friend. Atthe start of the war they both joined, S. In the Artillery, his friendin the Mounted Rifles. At parting they exchanged identification tokens. S. 's bore his initials and the one word "Violets"--which meant that theywere his favourite flower and he would like to have some scattered overhim when he was buried. His friend wore his initials and the words "Noflowers by request. " It was S. 's first week out--they were advancing, having driven back the enemy, and were taking up a covered position in awood from which to renew their offensive. It was night, black as pitch, but they knew that the wood must have been the scene of fighting by thescuttling of the rats. Suddenly the moon came out, and from beneath abush S. Saw a face--or rather half a face--which he thought herecognised, gazing up at him. He corrects himself when he tells thestory, and says that it wasn't so much the disfigured features as theprofile that struck him as familiar. He bent down and searched beneaththe shirt, and drew out a little metal disc with "No flowers by request"written on it. 

I don't know whether I ought to repeat things like that to you, but thedescription was so graphic. I have met many who have returned from theFront, and what puzzles me in all of them is their unawed acceptance ofdeath. I don't think I could ever accept it as natural; it's toodiscourteous in its interruption of many dreams and plans and loves. 

 Yours with very much love, Con. 

VI

SHORNCLIFF, August 30th, 1916. 

MY DEARESTS:

I have just returned from sending you a cable to let you know that I'moff to France. The word came out in orders yesterday, and I shall leavebefore the end of the week with a draft of officers--I have been inEngland just a day over four weeks. My only regret is that I shall missthe boys who should be travelling up to London about the same time as Iam setting out for the Front. After I have been there for three months Iam supposed to get a leave--this should be due to me about the beginningof December, and you can judge how I shall count on it. Think of themeeting with R. And E. , and the immensity of the joy. 

Selfishly I wish that you were here at this moment--actually I'm gladthat you are away. Everybody goes out quite unemotionally and with veryfew good-byes--we made far more fuss in the old days about a week-endvisit. 

Now that at last it has come--this privileged moment for which I haveworked and waited--my heart is very quiet. It's the test of a characterwhich I have often doubted. I shall be glad not to have to doubt itagain. Whatever happens, I know you will be glad to remember that at agreat crisis I tried to play the man, however small my qualifications. We have always lived so near to one another's affections that this goingout alone is more lonely to me than to most men. I have always had someone near at hand with love-blinded eyes to see my faults as springingfrom higher motives. Now I reach out my hands across six thousand milesand only touch yours with my imagination to say good-bye. What queersights these eyes, which have been almost your eyes, will witness! If myhands do anything respectable, remember that it is your hands that aredoing it. It is your influence as a family that has made me ready forthe part I have to play, and where I go, you follow me. 

Poor little circle of three loving persons, please be tremendouslybrave. Don't let anything turn you into cowards--we've all got to beworthy of each other's sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice may prove tobe for the one the greater the nobility demanded of the remainder. Howidle the words sound, and yet they will take deep meanings when time hasgiven them graver sanctions. I think gallant is the word I've beentrying to find--we must be gallant English women and gentlemen. 

It's been raining all day and I got very wet this morning. Don't youwish I had caught some quite harmless sickness? When I didn't want to goback to school, I used to wet my socks purposely in order to catch cold, but the cold always avoided me when I wanted it badly. How far away thechildish past seems--almost as though it never happened. And was Ireally the budding novelist in New York? Life has become so stern andscarlet--and so brave. From my window I look out on the English Channel, a cold, grey-green sea, with rain driving across it and a fleet of smallcraft taking shelter. Over there beyond the curtain of mist liesFrance--and everything that awaits me. 

News has just come that I have to start. Will continue from France. 

 Yours ever lovingly, Con. 

VII

Friday, September 1st, 1916, 11 am. 

DEAREST FATHER AND MOTHER:

I embark at 12. 30--so this is the last line before I reach France. Iexpect the boys are now within sight of English shores--I wish I couldhave had an hour with them. 

I'm going to do my best to bring you honour--remember that--I shall dothings for your sake out there, living up to the standards you havetaught me. 

 Yours with a heart full of love, Con. 

VIII

FRANCE, September 1st, 1916. 

DEAREST M. :

Here I am in France with the same strange smells and street cries, andalmost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobblestones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gâteauxfor the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you wouldmost certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to methat I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churchesand dead history--only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I wascoming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that batters usabout so. It's three years since I was in France--the last time was withArthur in Provence. It's five years since you and I did our famous triptogether. 

I wish you were here--there are heaps of English nurses in the streets. I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow. How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter! If I did, Ifear you would not get it--so I have to write in generalities. None ofthis seems real--it's a kind of wild pretence from which I shallawake-and when I tell you my dream you'll laugh and say, "How absurd ofyou, dreaming that you were a soldier. I must say you look like it. "

 Good-bye, my dearest girl, God bless you, Con. 

IX

September 8th, 1916. 

MY DEAREST ONES:

I'm sending this to meet you on your return from Kootenay. I leftEngland on September 1st and had a night at my point of disembarkation, and then set off on a wandering adventure in search of my division. I'msure you'll understand that I cannot enter into any details--I can onlygive you general and purely personal impressions. There were two otherofficers with me, both from Montreal. We had to picnic on chocolate andwine for twenty-four hours through our lack of forethought in notsupplying ourselves with food for the trip. I shaved the first morningwith water from the exhaust of a railroad engine, having first balancedmy mirror on the step. The engineer was fascinated with my safety razor. There were Tommies from the trenches in another train, muddied to theeyes--who showed themselves much more resourceful. They cookedthemselves quite admirable meals as they squatted on the rails, overlittle fires on which they perched tomato cans. Sunday evening we sawour first German prisoners--a young and degenerate-looking lot. Sundayevening we got off at a station in the rain, and shouldered our ownluggage. Our luggage, by the way, consists of a sleeping bag, in whichmuch of our stuff is packed, and a kit sack--for an immediate change andtoilet articles one carries a haversack hung across the shoulder. Well, as I say, we alighted and coaxed a military wagon to come to our rescue. As we set off through a drizzling rain, trudging behind the cart, adouble rainbow shone, which I took for an omen. Presently we came to arest camp, where we told our sad story of empty tummies, and were put upfor the night. A Jock--all Highlanders are called Jock--looked after us. Next morning we started out afresh in a motor lorry and finished at aY. M. C. A. Tent, where we stayed two nights. On Wednesday we met theGeneral in Command of our Division, who posted me to the battery, whichis said to be the best in the best brigade in the best division--so youmay see I'm in luck. I found the battery just having come out ofaction--we expect to go back again in a day or two. Major B. Is theO. C. --a fine man. The lieutenant who shares my tent won the MilitaryCross at Ypres last Spring. I'm very happy--which will make youhappy--and longing for my first taste of real war. 

How strangely far away I am from you--all the experiences so unsharedand different. Long before this reaches you I shall have been in actionseveral times. This time three years ago my streak of luck came to meand I was prancing round New York. To-day I am much more genuinely happyin mind, for I feel, as I never felt when I was only writing, that I amdoing something difficult which has no element of self in it. If I comeback, life will be a much less restless affair. 

This letter! I can imagine it being delivered and the shout from whoevertakes it and the comments. I make the contrast in my mind--this littlelean-to spread of canvas about four feet high, the horse-lines, guns, sentries going up and down--and then the dear home and the well-lovedfaces. 

 Good-bye. Don't be at all nervous. Yours lovingly, Con. 

X

September 12th, Tuesday. 

DEAREST M. :

You will already have received my first letters giving you my addressover here. The wagon has just come up to our position, but it hasbrought me only one letter since I've been across. I'm sitting in mydug-out with shells passing over my head with the sound of rippinglinen. I've already had the novel experience of firing a battery, andto-morrow I go up to the first line trenches. 

It's extraordinary how commonplace war becomes to a man who is thrustamong others who consider it commonplace. Not fifty yards away from me adead German lies rotting and uncovered--I daresay he was buried once andthen blown out by a shell. 

Wednesday, 7 p. M. 

Your letters came two hours ago--the first to reach me here--and I havedone little else but read and re-read them. How they bring the old waysof life back with their love and longing! Dear mother's tie will be wornto-morrow, and it will be ripping to feel that it was made by her hands. Your cross has not arrived yet, dear. Your mittens will be jolly for thewinter. I've heard nothing from the boys yet. 

To-day I took a trip into No-Man's Land--when the war is ended I'll beable to tell you all about it. I think the picture is photographed uponmy memory forever. There's so much you would like to hear and so littleI'm allowed to tell. Ask G. M. 'C. If he was at Princeton with a man namedPrice--an instructor there. 

You ought to see the excitement when the water-cart brings us our mailand the letters are handed out. Some of the gunners have evidently toldtheir Canadian girls that they are officers, and so they are addressedon their letters as lieutenants. I have to censor some of their replies, and I can tell you they are as often funny as pathetic. The ones totheir mothers are childish, too, and have rows of kisses. I think menare always kiddies if you look beneath the surface. The snapshots didfill me with a wanting to be with you in Kootenay. But that's not whereyou'll receive this. There'll probably be a fire in the sitting-room athome, and a strong aroma of coffee and tobacco. You'll be sitting in alow chair before the fire and your fingers rubbing the hair above yourleft ear as you read this aloud. I'd like to walk in on you and say, "Nomore need for letters now. " Some day soon, I pray and expect. 

Tell dear Papa and Mother that their answers come next. What a lot oflove you each one manage to put into your written pages! I'm afraid if Ilet myself go that way I might make you unhappy. 

Since writing this far I have had supper. I'm now sleeping in a newdug-out and get a shower of mould on my sleeping-kit each time the gunsare fired. One doesn't mind that particularly, especially when you knowthat the earth walls make you safe. I have a candle in an old petrol tinand dodge the shadows as I write. You know, this artillery game is goodsport and one takes everything as it comes with a joke. The men aresplendid--their cheeriness comes up bubbling whenever the occasion callsfor the dumps. Certainly there are fine qualities which war, despite itsunnaturalness, develops. I'm hats off to every infantry private I meetnowadays. 

God bless you and all of you. Yours lovingly, Con. 

The reference in the previous letter to a cross is to a little bronzecross of Francis of Assisi. 

Many years ago I visited Assisi, and, on leaving, the monks gave me fourof these small bronze crosses, assuring me that those who wore them weresecurely defended in all peril by the efficacious prayers of St. Francis. Just before Coningsby left Shorncliff to go to France he wroteto us and asked if we couldn't send him something to hang round his neckfor luck. We fortunately had one of these crosses of St. Francis at theranch, and his sister--the M. Of these letters-sent it to him. Itarrived safely, and he has worn it ever since. 

XI

September 15th, 1916. 

DEAR FATHER:

Your last letter to me was written on a quiet morning in August--in thesummer house at Kootenay. It came up yesterday evening on a water-cartfrom the wagon-lines to a scene a little in contrast. 

It's a fortnight to-day since I left England, and already I've seenaction. Things move quickly in this game, and it is a game--one whichbrings out both the best and the worst qualities in a man. Ifunconscious heroism is the virtue most to be desired, and heroism spicedwith a strong sense of humour at that, then pretty well every man I havemet out here has the amazing guts to wear his crown of thorns as thoughit were a cap-and-bells. To do that for the sake of corporatestout-heartedness is, I think, the acme of what Aristotle meant byvirtue. A strong man, or a good man or a brainless man, can walk to meetpain with a smile on his mouth because he knows that he is strong enoughto bear it, or worthy enough to defy it, or because he is such a foolthat he has no imagination. But these chaps are neither particularlystrong, good, nor brainless; they're more like children, utterly casualwith regard to trouble, and quite aware that it is useless to struggleagainst their elders. So they have the merriest of times while they can, and when the governess, Death, summons them to bed, they obey her withunsurprised quietness. It sends the mercury of one's optimism rising tosee the way they do it. I search my mind to find the bigness of motivewhich supports them, but it forever evades me. These lads are not thekind who philosophise about life; they're the sort, many of them, whowould ordinarily wear corduroys and smoke a cutty pipe. I suppose theChristian martyrs would have done the same had corduroys been thefashion in that day, and if a Roman Raleigh had discovered tobacco. 

I wrote this about midnight and didn't get any further, as I was up tillsix carrying on and firing the battery. After adding another page or twoI want to get some sleep, as I shall probably have to go up to theobservation station to watch the effect of fire to-night. But before Iturn in I want to tell you that I had the most gorgeous mail fromeverybody. Now that I'm in touch with you all again, it's almost likesaying "How-do?" every night and morning. 

I daresay you'll wonder how it feels to be under shell-fire. This is howit feels--you don't realise your danger until you come to think about itafterwards--at the time it's like playing coconut shies at a coon'shead--only you're the coon's head. You take too much interest in thesport of dodging to be afraid. You'll hear the Tommies saying if onebursts nearly on them, "Line, you blighter, line. Five minutes moreleft, " just as though they were reprimanding the unseen Hun battery forrotten shooting. 

The great word of the Tommies here is "No bloody bon"--a strange mixtureof French and English, which means that a thing is no good. If itpleases them it's _Jake_--though where Jake comes from nobody knows. 

Now I must get a wink or two, as I don't know when I may have to startoff. 

 Ever yours, with love, CON. 

XII

September 19th, 1916. 

Dearest Mother:

I've been in France 19 days, and it hasn't taken me long to go intoaction. Soon I shall be quite an old hand. I'm just back from 24 hoursin the Observation Post, from which one watches the effect of fire. Iunderstand now and forgive the one phrase which the French children havepicked up from our Tommies on account of its frequentoccurrence--"bl---- mud. " I never knew that mud could be so thick andtreacly. All my fear that I might be afraid under shell-fire isover--you get to believe that if you're going to be hit you're going tobe. But David's phrase keeps repeating itself in my mind, "Ten thousandshall fall at thy side, etc. , but it shall not come nigh unto thee. "It's a curious thing that the men who are most afraid are those who getmost easily struck. A friend of G. M. C. 's was hit the other day withinthirty yards of me--he was a Princeton chap. I mentioned him in one ofmy previous letters. Our right section commander got a blighty two daysago and is probably now in England. He went off on a firing batterywagon, grinning all over his face, saying he wouldn't sell that bit ofblood and shrapnel for a thousand pounds. I'm wearing your tie--it's theenvy of the battery. All the officers wanted me to give them the name ofmy girl. It never occurs to men that mothers will do things like that. 

Thank the powers it has stopped raining and we'll be able to get dry. Icame in plastered from head to foot with lying in the rain on my tummyand peering over the top of a trench. Isn't it a funny change fromcomfortable breakfasts, press notices and a blazing fire?

Do you want any German souvenirs? Just at present I can get plenty. Ihave a splendid bayonet and a belt with Kaiser Bill's arms on it--butyou can't forward these things from France. The Germans swear thatthey're not using bayonets with saw-edges, but you can buy them for fivefrancs from the Tommies--ones they've taken from the prisoners or elsepicked up. 

You needn't be nervous about me. I'm a great little dodger ofwhizz-bangs. Besides I have a superstition that there's something inthe power of M. 's cross to bless. It came with the mittens, and is atpresent round my neck. 

You know what it sounds like when they're shooting coals down an ironrun-way into a cellar-well, imagine a thousand of them. That's what I'mhearing while I write. 

God bless you; I'm very happy. 

 Yours ever, Con. 

XIII

September 19th, 1916. 

Dearest Father:

I'm writing you your birthday letter early, as I don't know how busy Imay be in the next week, nor how long this may take to reach you. Youknow how much love I send you and how I would like to be with you. D'youremember the birthday three years ago when we set the victrola goingoutside your room door? Those were my high-jinks days when very manythings seemed possible. I'd rather be the person I am now than theperson I was then. Life was selfish though glorious. 

Well, I've seen my first modern battlefield and am quite disillusionedabout the splendour of war. The splendour is all in the souls of themen who creep through the squalor like vermin--it's in nothingexternal. There was a chap here the other day who deserved the V. C. Fourtimes over by running back through the Hun shell fire to bring news thatthe infantry wanted more artillery support. I was observing for mybrigade in the forward station at the time. How he managed to livethrough the ordeal nobody knows. But men laugh while they do thesethings. It's fine. 

A modern battlefield is the abomination of abominations. Imagine a vaststretch of dead country, pitted with shell-holes as though it had beenmutilated with small-pox. There's not a leaf or a blade of grass insight. Every house has either been leveled or is in ruins. No birdsings. Nothing stirs. The only live sound is at night--the scurry ofrats. You enter a kind of ditch, called a trench; it leads on to anotherand another in an unjoyful maze. From the sides feet stick out, and armsand faces--the dead of previous encounters. "One of our chaps, " you saycasually, recognising him by his boots or khaki, or "Poor blighter--aHun!" One can afford to forget enmity in the presence of the dead. It ishorribly difficult sometimes to distinguish between the living and theslaughtered--they both lie so silently in their little kennels in theearthen bank. You push on--especially if you are doing observation work, till you are past your own front line and out in No Man's Land. You haveto crouch and move warily now. Zing! A bullet from a German sniper. Youlaugh and whisper, "A near one, that. " My first trip to the trenches wasup to No Man's Land. I went in the early dawn and came to a MadameTussaud's show of the dead, frozen into immobility in the mostextraordinary attitudes. Some of them were part way out of the ground, one hand pressed to the wound, the other pointing, the head sunken andthe hair plastered over the forehead by repeated rains. I kept onwondering what my companions would look like had they been three weeksdead. My imagination became ingeniously and vividly morbid. When I hadto step over them to pass, it seemed as though they must clutch at mytrench coat and ask me to help. Poor lonely people, so brave and soanonymous in their death! Somewhere there is a woman who loved each oneof them and would give her life for my opportunity to touch the poorclay that had been kind to her. It's like walking through the day ofresurrection to visit No Man's Land. Then the Huns see you and theshrapnel begins to fall--you crouch like a dog and run for it. 

One gets used to shell-fire up to a point, but there's not a man whodoesn't want to duck when he hears one coming. The worst of all is thewhizz-bang, because it doesn't give you a chance--it pounces and is onyou the same moment that it bangs. There's so much I wish that I couldtell you. I can only say this, at the moment we're making history. 

What a curious birthday letter! I think of all your other birthdays--theones before I met these silent men with the green and yellow faces, andthe blackened lips which will never speak again. What happy times wehave had as a family--what happy jaunts when you took me in those earlydays, dressed in a sailor suit, when you went hunting pictures. Yet, forall the damnability of what I now witness, I was never quieter in myheart. To have surrendered to an imperative self-denial brings a peacewhich self-seeking never brought. 

So don't let this birthday be less gay for my absence. It ought to bethe proudest in your life--proud because your example has taught each ofyour sons to do the difficult things which seem right. It would havebeen a condemnation of you if any one of us had been a shirker. 

 "I want to buy fine things for you And be a soldier if I can. "

The lines come back to me now. You read them to me first in the darklittle study from a green oblong book. You little thought that I wouldbe a soldier--even now I can hardly realise the fact. It seems a dreamfrom which I shall wake up. Am I really killing men day by day? Am Ireally in jeopardy myself?

Whatever happens I'm not afraid, and I'll give you reason to be glad ofme. Very much love, CON. 

The poem referred to in this letter was actually written for Coningsbywhen he was between five and six years old. The dark little study whichhe describes was in the old house at Wesley's Chapel, in the City Road, London--and it was very dark, with only one window, looking out upon adingy yard. The green oblong book in which I used to write my poems Istill have; and it is an illustration of the tenacity of a child'smemory that he should recall it. The poem was called _A Little Boy'sProgramme_, and ran thus:

 I am so very young and small, That, when big people pass me by, I sometimes think they are so high I'll never be a man at all. 

 And yet I want to be a man Because so much I want to do; I want to buy fine things for you, And be a soldier, if I can. 

 * * * * *

 When I'm a man I will not let Poor little children starve, or be Ill-used, or stand and beg of me With naked feet out in the wet. 

 * * * * *

 Now, don't you laugh!--The father kissed The little serious mouth and said "You've almost made me cry instead, You blessed little optimist. "

XIV

September 21st, 1916. 

My Very Dear M. :

I am wearing your talisman while I write and have a strong superstitionin its efficacy. The efficacy of your socks is also very noticeable--Iwore them the first time on a trip to the Forward Observation Station. Ihad to lie on my tummy in the mud, my nose just showing above theparapet, for the best part of twenty-four hours. Your socks littlethought I would take them into such horrid places when you made them. 

Last night both the King and Sir Sam sent us congratulations--I poppedin just at the right time. I daresay you know far more about our doingsthan I do. Only this morning I picked up the _London Times_ and read afull account of everything I have witnessed. The account is likely to bestill fuller in the New York papers. 

"Home for Christmas"--that's what the Tommies are promising theirmothers and sweethearts in all their letters that I censor. Yesterday Iwas offered an Imperial commission in the army of occupation. But homefor Christmas, will be Christmas, 1917--I can't think that it will beearlier. Very much love, CON. 

XV

Sunday, September 24th, 1916. 

DEAREST MOTHER:

Your locket has just reached me, and I have strung it round my neck withM. 's cross. Was it M. 's cross the other night that accounted for myluck? I was in a gun-pit when a shell landed, killing a man only a footaway from me and wounding three others--I and the sergeant were the onlytwo to get out all right. Men who have been out here some time have adozen stories of similar near squeaks. And talking of squeaks, it was amouse that saved one man. It kept him awake to such an extent that hedetermined to move to another place. Just as he got outside the dug-outa shell fell on the roof. 

You'll be pleased to know that we have a ripping chaplain or Padre, asthey call chaplains, with us. He plays the game, and I've struck up agreat friendship with him. We discuss literature and religion when we'refeeling a bit fed up. We talk at home of our faith being tested--onebegins to ask strange questions here when he sees what men are allowedby the Almighty to do to one another, and so it's a fine thing to be inconstant touch with a great-hearted chap who can risk his life daily tospeak of the life hereafter to dying Tommies. 

I wish I could tell you of my doings, but it's strictly against orders. You may read in the papers of actions in which I've taken part and neverknow that I was there. 

We live for the most part on tinned stuff, but our appetites makeanything taste palatable. Living and sleeping in the open air keeps oneravenous. And one learns to sleep the sleep of the just despite theroaring of the guns. 

God bless you each one and give us peaceful hearts. 

 Yours ever, Con. 

XVI

September 28th, 1916. 

My Dears:

We're in the midst of a fine old show, so I don't get much opportunityfor writing. Suffice it to say that I've seen the big side of war by nowand the extraordinary uncalculating courage of it. Men run out of atrench to an attack with as much eagerness as they would display inovertaking a late bus. If you want to get an idea of what meals are likewhen a row is on, order the McAlpin to spread you a table where 34thcrosses Broadway--and wait for the uptown traffic on the Elevated. It'swonderful to see the waiters dodging with dishes through theshell-holes. 

It's a wonderful autumn day, golden and mellow; I picture to myself whatthis country must have looked like before the desolation of war struckit. 

I was Brigade observation officer on September 26th, and wouldn't havemissed what I saw for a thousand dollars. It was a touch and gobusiness, with shells falling everywhere and machine-gun fire--butsomething glorious to remember. I had the great joy of being useful insetting a Hun position on fire. I think the war will be over in atwelvemonth. 

Our great joy is composing menus of the meals we'll eat when we gethome. Good-bye for the present. CON. 

XVII

October 1st, 1916. 

MY DEAREST M. :

Sunday morning, your first back in Newark. You're not up yet owing tothe difference in time--I can imagine the quiet house with the first ofthe morning stealing greyly in. You'll be presently going to church tosit in your old-fashioned mahogany pew. There's not much of Sunday inour atmosphere--only the little one can manage to keep in his heart. Ishall share the echo of yours by remembering. 

I'm waiting orders at the present moment to go forward with the Coloneland pick out a new gun position. You know I'm very happy-satisfied forthe first time I'm doing something big enough to make me forget allfailures and self-contempts. I know at last that I can measure up to thestandard I have always coveted for myself. So don't worry yourselvesabout any note of hardship that you may interpret into my letters, forthe deprivation is fully compensated for by the winged sense ofexaltation one has. 

Things have been a little warm round us lately. A gun to our right, another to our rear and another to our front were knocked out withdirect hits. We've got some of the chaps taking their meals with us nowbecause their mess was all shot to blazes. There was an officer who waswith me at the 53rd blown thirty feet into the air while I was watching. He picked himself up and insisted on carrying on, although his face wasa mass of bruises. I walked in on the biggest engagement of the entirewar the moment I came out here. There was no gradual breaking-in for me. My first trip to the front line was into a trench full of dead. 

Have you seen Lloyd George's great speech? I'm all with him. No matterwhat the cost and how many of us have to give our lives, this War mustbe so finished that war may be forever at an end. If the devils who planwars could only see the abysmal result of their handiwork! Give them oneday in the trenches under shell-fire when their lives aren't worth afive minutes' purchase--or one day carrying back the wounded throughthis tortured country, or one day in a Red Cross train. No one canimagine the damnable waste and Christlessness of this battering ofhuman flesh. The only way that this War can be made holy is by making itso thorough that war will be finished for all time. 

Papa at least will be awake by now. How familiar the old house seems tome--I can think of the place of every picture. Do you set the victrolagoing now-a-days? I bet you play Boys in Khaki, Boys in Blue. 

Please send me anything in the way of eatables that the goodness of yourhearts can imagine--also smokes. 

Later. 

I came back from the front-line all right and have since been hard at itfiring. Your letters reached me in the midst of a bombardment--I readthem in a kind of London fog of gun-powder smoke, with my steel helmettilted back, in the interval of commanding my section through amegaphone. 

Don't suppose that I'm in any way unhappy--I'm as cheerful as a cricketand do twice as much hopping--I have to. There's somethingextraordinarily bracing about taking risks and getting away withit--especially when you know that you're contributing your share to afar-reaching result. My mother is the mother of a soldier now, andsoldiers' mothers don't lie awake at night imagining--they just say aprayer for their sons and leave everything in God's hands. I'm sureyou'd far rather I died than not play the man to the fullest of mystrength. It isn't when you die that matters--it's how. Not but what Iintend to return to Newark and make the house reek of tobacco smokebefore I've done. 

We're continually in action now, and the casualty to B. Has left usshort-handed--moreover we're helping out another battery which has losttwo officers. As you've seen by the papers, we've at last got the Hun onthe run. Three hundred passed me the other day unescorted, coming in togive themselves up as prisoners. They're the dirtiest lot you ever seteyes on, and looked as though they hadn't eaten for months. I wish Icould send you some souvenirs. But we can't send them out of France. 

I'm scribbling by candlelight and everything's jumping with the stampingof the guns. I wear the locket and cross all the time. 

 Yours with much love, Con. 

XVIII

October 13th, 1916. 

DEAR ONES:

I have only time to write and assure you that I am safe. We're living intrenches at present--I have my sleeping bag placed on a stretcher tokeep it fairly dry. By the time you get this we expect to be having arest, as we've been hard at it now for an unusually long time. How Iwish that I could tell you so many things that are big and vivid in mymind-but the censor--!

Yesterday I had an exciting day. I was up forward when word came throughthat an officer still further forward was wounded and he'd been caughtin a heavy enemy fire. I had only a kid telephonist with me, but wefound a stretcher, went forward and got him out. The earth was hoppingup and down like pop-corn in a frying pan. The unfortunate thing wasthat the poor chap died on the way out. It was only the evening beforethat we had dined together and he had told me what he was going to dowith his next leave. 

 God bless you all, CON. 

XIX

October 14th, 1916. 

DEAREST MOTHER:

I'm still all right and well. To-day I had the funniest experience of mylife--got caught in a Hun curtain of fire and had to lie on my tummyfor two hours in a trench with the shells bursting five yards fromme--and never a scratch. You know how I used to wonder what I'd do undersuch circumstances. Well, I laughed. All I could think of was the sleekpeople walking down Fifth Avenue, and the equally sleek crowds takingtea at the Waldorf. It struck me as ludicrous that I, who had been oneof them, should be lying there lunchless. For a little while I wasslightly deaf with the concussions. 

That poem keeps on going through my head, Oh, to come home once more, when the dusk is falling, To see the nursery lighted and the children's table spread; "Mother, mother, mother!" the eager voices calling, "The baby was so sleepy that he had to go to bed!"

Wouldn't it be good, instead of sitting in a Hun dug-out?

 Yours lovingly, CON. 

XX

October 15th, 1916. 

Dear Ones:

We're still in action, but are in hopes that soon we may be moved towinter quarters. We've had our taste of mud, and are anxious to moveinto better quarters before we get our next. I think I told you thatour O. C. Had got wounded in the feet, and our right section commandergot it in the shoulder a little earlier--so we're a bit short-handed andfind ourselves with plenty of work. 

I have curiously lucid moments when recent happenings focus themselvesin what seems to be their true perspective. The other night I wasForward Observation officer on one of our recent battlefields. I had towatch the front all night for signals, etc. There was a full white moonsailing serenely overhead, and when I looked at it I could almost fancymyself back in the old melancholy pomp of autumn woodlands where theleaves were red, not with the colour of men's blood. My mind went backto so many by-gone days-especially to three years ago. I seemed sovastly young then, upon reflection. For a little while I was full ofregrets for many things wasted, and then I looked at the battlefieldwith its scattered kits and broken rifles. Nothing seemed to matter verymuch. A rat came out-then other rats. I stood there feelingextraordinarily aloof from all things that can hurt, and--you'llsmile--I planned a novel. O, if I get back, how differently I shallwrite! When you've faced the worst in so many forms, you lose your fearand arrive at peace. There's a marvellous grandeur about all thiscarnage and desolation--men's souls rise above the distress--they haveto in order to survive. When you see how cheap men's bodies are youcannot help but know that the body is the least part of personality. 

You can let up on your nervousness when you get this, for I shall almostcertainly be in a safer zone. We've done more than our share and must bewithdrawn soon. There's hardly a battery which does not deserve a dozenD. S. O. 's with a V. C. Or two thrown in. 

It's 4. 30 now--you'll be in church and, I hope, wearing my flowers. Waittill I come back and you shall go to church with the biggest bunch ofroses that ever were pinned to a feminine chest. I wonder when that willbe. 

We have heaps of humour out here. You should have seen me this morning, sitting on the gun-seat while my batman cut my hair. A sand-bag wasspread over my shoulders in place of a towel and the gun-detachmentstood round and gave advice. I don't know what I look like, for Ihaven't dared to gaze into my shaving mirror. 

 Good luck to us all, CON

XXI

October 18th, 1910

Dearest M. :

I've come down to the lines to-day; to-morrow I go back again. I'msitting alone in a deep chalk dug-out--it is 10 p. M. And I have lit afire by splitting wood with a bayonet. Your letters from Montrealreached me yesterday. They came up in the water-cart when we'd all begunto despair of mail. It was wonderful the silence that followed whileevery one went back home for a little while, and most of them met theirbest girls. We've fallen into the habit of singing in parts. Jerusalemthe Golden is a great favourite as we wait for our breakfast--we gothrough all our favourite songs, including Poor Old Adam Was My Father. Our greatest favourite is one which is symbolising the hopes that are inso many hearts on this greatest battlefield in history. We sing it undershell-fire as a kind of prayer, we sing it as we struggle knee-deep inthe appalling mud, we sing it as we sit by a candle in our deep capturedGerman dug-outs. It runs like this:

 "There's a long, long trail a-winding Into the land of my dreams, Where the nightingales are singing And a white moon beams:

 There's a long, long night of waiting Until my dreams all come true; Till the day when I'll be going down That long, long trail with you. "

You ought to be able to get it, and then you will be singing it when I'mdoing it. 

No, I don't know what to ask from you for Christmas--unless a plumpudding and a general surprise box of sweets and food stuffs. If youdon't mind my suggesting it, I wouldn't a bit mind a Christmas box atonce--a schoolboy's tuck box. I wear the locket, cross, and tie all thetime as kind of charms against danger--they give me the feeling ofloving hands going with me everywhere. 

 God bless you. Yours ever, CON. 

XXII

October 23, 1916

Dearest All:

As you know I have been in action ever since I left England and amstill. I've lived in various extemporised dwellings and am at presentwriting from an eight foot deep hole dug in the ground and covered overwith galvanised iron and sand-bags. We have made ourselves verycomfortable, and a fire is burning--I correct that--comfortable until itrains, I should say, when the water finds its own level. We have justfinished with two days of penetrating rain and mist--in the trenches themud was up to my knees, so you can imagine the joy of wading down theseshell-torn tunnels. Good thick socks have been priceless. 

You'll be pleased to hear that two days ago I was made Right SectionCommander--which is fairly rapid promotion. It means a good deal morework and responsibility, but it gives me a contact with the men which Ilike. 

I don't know when I'll get leave--not for another two months anyway. Itwould be ripping if I had word in time for you to run over to Englandfor the brief nine days. 

I plan novels galore and wonder whether I shall ever write them the wayI see them now. My imagination is to an extent crushed by thestupendousness of reality. I think I am changed in some stern spiritualway--stripped of flabbiness. I am perhaps harder--I can't say. That Ishould be a novelist seems unreasonable--it's so long since I had my ownway in the world and met any one on artistic terms. But I have enoughego left to be very interested in my book. And by the way, when we'reout at the front and the battery wants us to come in they simply phoneup the password, "Slaves of Freedom, " the meaning of which we allunderstand. 

You are ever in my thoughts, and I pray the day may not be far distantwhen we meet again. 

 CON. 

XXIII

October 27th, 1916. 

Dearest Family:

All to-day I've been busy registering our guns. There is little chanceof rest--one would suppose that we intended to end the war by spring. 

Two new officers joined our battery from England, which makes the worklighter. One of them brings the news that D. , one of the two officerswho crossed over from England with me and wandered through France withme in search of our Division, is already dead. He was a corking fellow, and I'm very sorry. He was caught by a shell in the head and legs. 

I am still living in a sand-bagged shell-hole eight feet beneath thelevel of the ground. I have a sleeping bag with an eider-down inside it, for my bed; it is laid on a stretcher, which is placed in a roofed-intrench. For meals, when there isn't a block on the roads, we do verywell; we subscribe pretty heavily to the mess, and have an officer backat the wagon-lines to do our purchasing. When we move forward into a newposition, however, we go pretty short, as roads have to be built for thethrong of traffic. Most of what we eat is tinned--and I never want tosee tinned salmon again when this war is ended. I have a personalservant, a groom and two horses--but haven't been on a horse for sevenweeks on account of being in action. We're all pretty fed up withcontinuous firing and living so many hours in the trenches. The wayartillery is run to-day an artillery lieutenant is more in the trenchesthan an infantryman--the only thing he doesn't do is to go over theparapet in an attack. And one of our chaps did that the other day, charging the Huns with a bar of chocolate in one hand and a revolver inthe other. I believe he set a fashion which will be imitated. Threetimes in my experience I have seen the infantry jump out of theirtrenches and go across. It's a sight never to be forgotten. One timethere were machine guns behind me and they sent a message to me, askingme to lie down and take cover. That was impossible, as I was observingfor my brigade, so I lay on the parapet till the bullets began to falltoo close for comfort, then I dodged out into a shell-hole with theGerman barrage bursting all around me, and had a most gorgeous view ofa modern attack. That was some time ago, so you needn't be nervous. 

Have I mentioned rum to you? I never tasted it to my knowledge until Icame out here. We get it served us whenever we're wet. It's the onething which keeps a man alive in the winter--you can sleep when you'redrenched through and never get a cold if you take it. 

At night, by a fire, eight feet underground, we sing all the dear oldsongs. We manage a kind of glee--Clementina, The Long, Long Trail, ThreeBlind Mice, Long, Long Ago, Rock of Ages. Hymns are quite favourites. 

Don't worry about me; your prayers weave round me a mantle of defence. 

Yours with more love than I can write, CON. 

XXIV

October 31st, 1916. Hallowe'en. 

Dearest People:

Once more I'm taking the night-firing and so have a chance to write toyou. I got letters from you all, and they each deserve answers, but Ihave so little time to write. We've been having beastly weather--drownedout of our little houses below ground, with rivers running through ourbeds. The mud is once more up to our knees and gets into whatever weeat. The wonder is that we keep healthy--I suppose it's the open air. Mythroat never troubles me and I'm free from colds in spite of wet feet. The main disadvantage is that we rarely get a chance to wash or changeour clothes. Your ideas of an army with its buttons all shining is quiteerroneous; we look like drunk and disorderlies who have spent the nightin the gutter--and we have the same instinct for fighting. 

In the trenches the other day I heard mother's Suffolk tongue and had ajolly talk with a chap who shared many of my memories. It was his firsttrip in and the Huns were shelling badly, but he didn't seem at allupset. 

We're still hard at it and have given up all idea of a rest--the onlyway we'll get one is with a blighty. You say how often you tellyourselves that the same moon looks down on me; it does, but on a scenehow different! We advance over old battlefields--everything is blasted. If you start digging, you turn up what's left of something human. Ifthere were any grounds for superstition, surely the places in which Ihave been should be ghost-haunted. One never thinks about it. For myselfI have increasingly the feeling that I am protected by your prayers; Itell myself so when I am in danger. 

Here I sit in an old sweater and muddy breeches, the very reverse ofyour picture of a soldier, and I imagine to myself your receipt of this. Our chief interest is to enquire whether milk, jam and mail have come upfrom the wagon-lines; it seems a faery-tale that there are places wheremilk and jam can be had for the buying. See how simple we become. 

Poor little house at Kootenay! I hate to think of it empty. We had suchgood times there twelve months ago. They have a song here to a nurseryrhyme lilt, Après le Guerre Finis; it goes on to tell of all the goodtimes we'll have when the war is ended. Every night I invent a new storyof my own celebration of the event, usually, as when I was a kiddie, just before I fall asleep--only it doesn't seem possible that the warwill ever end. 

I hear from the boys very regularly. There's just the chance that I mayget leave to London in the New Year and meet them before they set out. Ialways picture you with your heads high in the air. I'm glad to think ofyou as proud because of the pain we've made you suffer. 

Once again I shall think of you on Papa's birthday. I don't think thiswill be the saddest he will have to remember. It might have been if wethree boys had still all been with him. If I were a father, I wouldprefer at all costs that my sons should be men. What good comrades we'vealways been, and what long years of happy times we have in memory--allthe way down from a little boy in a sailor-suit to Kootenay!

I fell asleep in the midst of this. I've now got to go out and start theother gun firing. With very much love. 

 Yours, CON. 

XXV

November 1st, 1916. 

My Dearest M. :

Peace after a storm! Your letter was not brought up by the water-wagonthis evening, but by an orderly--the mud prevented wheel-traffic. I wasjust sitting down to read it when Fritz began to pay us too muchattention. I put down your letter, grabbed my steel helmet, rushed outto see where the shells were falling, and then cleared my men to a saferarea. (By the way, did I tell you that I had been made Right SectionCommander?) After about half an hour I came back and settled down by afire made of smashed ammunition boxes in a stove borrowed from a ruinedcottage. I'm always ashamed that my letters contain so little news andare so uninteresting. This thing is so big and dreadful that it does notbear putting down on paper. I read the papers with the accounts ofsinging soldiers and other rubbish; they depict us as though we were alot of hair-brained idiots instead of men fully realising our danger, who plod on because it's our duty. I've seen a good many men killed bynow--we all have--consequently the singing soldier story makes us smile. We've got a big job; we know that we've got to "Carry On" whateverhappens--so we wear a stern grin and go to it. There's far more heroismin the attitude of men out here than in the footlight attitude thatjournalists paint for the public. It isn't a singing matter to go onfiring a gun when gun-pits are going up in smoke within sight of you. 

What a terrible desecration war is! You go out one week and look throughyour glasses at a green, smiling country-little churches, villagesnestling among woods, white roads running across a green carpet; nextweek you see nothing but ruins and a country-side pitted withshell-holes. All night the machine guns tap like rivet-ting machineswhen a New York sky-scraper is in the building. Then suddenly in thenight a bombing attack will start, and the sky grows white with signalrockets. Orders come in for artillery retaliation, and your guns beginto stamp the ground like stallions; in the darkness on every side youcan see them snorting fire. Then stillness again, while Death counts hisharvest; the white rockets grow fainter and less hysterical. For an hourthere is blackness. 

My batman consoles himself with singing, "Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, And smile, smile, smile. "

There's a lot in his philosophy--it's best to go on smiling even whensome one who was once your pal lies forever silent in his blanket on astretcher. 

The great uplifting thought is that we have proved ourselves men. In ourdeath we set a standard which in ordinary life we could never havefollowed. Inevitably we should have sunk below our highest self. Here weknow that the world will remember us and that our loved ones, in spiteof tears, will be proud of us. What God will say to us we cannotguess--but He can't be too hard on men who did their duty. I think weall feel that trivial former failures are washed out by this finalsacrifice. When little M. Used to recite "Breathes there a man with soulso dead, who never to himself had said, 'This is my own, my nativeland, '" I never thought that I should have the chance that has now beengiven to me. I feel a great and solemn gratitude that I have beenthought worthy. Life has suddenly become effective and worthy by reasonof its carelessness of death. 

By the way, that Princeton man I mentioned so long ago was killed fortyyards away from me on my first trip into the trenches. Probably G. M'C. And his other friends know by now. He was the first man I ever sawsnuffed out. 

I'm wearing your mittens and find them a great comfort. I'll lookforward to some more of your socks--I can do with plenty of them. If anyof your friends are making things for soldiers, I wish you'd get them tosend them to this battery, as they would be gratefully accepted by themen. 

I wish I could come to _The Music Master_ with you. I wonder how longtill we do all those intimately family things together again. 

Good-bye, my dearest M. I live for home letters and am rarelydisappointed. 

God bless you, and love to you all. 

 Yours ever, CON. 

XXVI

November 4th, 1916. 

My Dearest Mother:

This morning I was wakened up in the gunpit where I was sleeping by thearrival of the most wonderful parcel of mail. It was really a kind ofChristmas morning for me. My servant had lit a fire in a puncturedpetrol can and the place looked very cheery. First of all entered anenormous affair, which turned out to be a stove which C. Had sent. Thenthere was a sand-bag containing all your gifts. You may bet I made forthat first, and as each knot was undone remembered the loving hands thathad done it up. I am now going up to a twenty-four-hour shift ofobserving, and shall take up the malted milk and some blocks ofchocolate for a hot drink. It somehow makes you seem very near to me toreceive things packed with your hands. When I go forward I shall alsotake candles and a copy of _Anne Veronica_ with me, so that if I get achance I can forget time. 

Always when I write to you odds and ends come to mind, smacking of localcolour. After an attack some months ago I met a solitary privatewandering across a shell-torn field, I watched him and thought somethingwas wrong by the aimlessness of his progress. When I spoke to him, helooked at me mistily and said, "Dead men. Moonlit road. " He kept onrepeating the phrase, and it was all that one could get out of him. Probably the dead men and the moonlit road were the last sights he hadseen before he went insane. 

Another touching thing happened two days ago. A Major turned up who hadtravelled fifty miles by motor lorries and any conveyance he could pickup on the road. He had left his unit to come to have a glimpse of ourfront-line trench where his son was buried. The boy had died there somedays ago in going over the parapet. I persuaded him that he ought not togo alone, and that in any case it wasn't a healthy spot. At last heconsented to let me take him to a point from which he could see theground over which his son had attacked and led his men. The sun wassinking behind us. He stood there very straightly, peering through myglasses--and then forgot all about me and began speaking to his son inchildish love-words. "Gone West, " they call dying out here--we rarelysay that a man is dead. I found out afterwards that it was the boy'smother the Major was thinking of when he pledged himself to visit thegrave in the front-line. 

But there are happier things than that. For instance, you should hearus singing at night in our dug-out--every tune we ever learnt, Ibelieve. Silver Threads Among the Gold, In the Gloaming, The Star ofBethlehem, I Hear You Calling Me, interspersed with Everybody Works butFather, and Poor Old Adam, etc. 

I wish I could know in time when I get my leave for you to come over andmeet me. I'm going to spend my nine days in the most glorious waysimaginable. To start with I won't eat anything that's canned and, to goon, I won't get out of bed till I feel inclined. And if you're there--!

Dreams and nonsense! God bless you all and keep us near and safe thoughabsent. Alive or "Gone West" I shall never be far from you; you maydepend on that--and I shall always hope to feel you brave and happy. This is a great game--cheese-mites pitting themselves against all thesplendours of Death. Please, please write well ahead, so that I may notmiss your Christmas letters. 

 Yours lovingly, CON. 

XXVII

November 6th, 1916. 

My Dear Ones:

Such a wonderful day it has been--I scarcely know where to start. I camedown last night from twenty-four hours in the mud, where I had beenobserving. I'd spent the night in a hole dug in the side of the trenchand a dead Hun forming part of the roof. I'd sat there re-living so manythings--the ecstatic moments of my life when I first touched fame--andmy feet were so cold that I could not feel them, so I thought all theharder of the pleasant things of the past. Then, as I say, I came backto the gun position to learn that I was to have one day off at the backof the lines. You can't imagine what that meant to me--one day in acountry that is green, one day where there is no shell-fire, one daywhere you don't turn up corpses with your tread! For two months I havenever left the guns except to go forward and I have never been fromunder shell-fire. All night long as I have slept the ground had beenshaken by the stamping of the guns--and now after two months, to comeback to comparative normality! The reason for this privilege beinggranted was that the powers that he had come to the conclusion that itwas time I had a bath. Since I sleep in my clothes and water is toovaluable for washing anything but the face and hands, they were probablyright in their guess at my condition. 

So with the greatest holiday of my life in prospect I went to the emptygunpit in which I sleep, and turned in. This morning I set out earlywith my servant, tramping back across the long, long battlefields whichour boys have won. The mud was knee-deep in places, but we floundered ontill we came to our old and deserted gun-position where my horses waitedfor me. From there I rode to the wagon-lines--the first time I've sat ahorse since I came into action. Far behind me the thunder of wingedmurder grew more faint. The country became greener; trees even hadleaves upon them which fluttered against the grey-blue sky. It waswonderful--like awaking from an appalling nightmare. My little beast wasfresh and seemed to share my joy, for she stepped out bravely. 

When I arrived at the wagon-lines I would not wait--I longed to seesomething even greener and quieter. My groom packed up some oats andaway we went again. My first objective was the military baths; I lay inhot water for half-an-hour and read the advertisements of my book. As Ilay there, for the first time since I've been out, I began to get ahalf-way true perspective of myself. What's left of the egotism of theauthor came to life, and--now laugh--I planned my next novel--planned itto the sound of men singing, because they were clean for the first timein months. I left my towels and soap with a military policeman, by theroadside, and went prancing off along country roads in search of thealmost forgotten places where people don't kill one another. Was itimagination? There seemed to me to be a different look in the faces ofthe men I met--for the time being they were neither hunters nor hunted. There were actually cows in the fields. At one point, where pollardedtrees stand like a Hobbema sketch against the sky, a group of officerswere coursing a hare, following a big black hound on horseback. We lostour way. A drenching rainstorm fell over us--we didn't care; and we sawas we looked back a most beautiful thing--a rainbow over green fields. It was as romantic as the first rainbow in childhood. 

All day I have been seeing lovely and familiar things as though for thefirst time. I've been a sort of Lazarus, rising out of his tomb andpraising God at the sound of a divine voice. You don't know howexquisite a ploughed field can look, especially after rain, unless youhave feared that you might never see one again. 

I came to a grey little village, where civilians were still living, andthen to a gate and a garden. In the cottage was a French peasant womanwho smiled, patted my hair because it was curly, and chatteredinterminably. The result was a huge omelette and a bottle of champagne. Then came a touch of naughtiness--a lady visitor with a copy of _La VieParisienne_, which she promptly bestowed on the English soldier. I readit, and dreamt of the time when I should walk the Champs Elysées again. It was growing dusk when I turned back to the noise of battle. There wasa white moon in a milky sky. Motor-bikes fled by me, great lorriesdriven by Jehus from London buses, and automobiles which too poignantlyhad been Strand taxis and had taken lovers home from the Gaiety. Ijogged along thinking very little, but supremely happy. Now I'm back atthe wagon-line; to-morrow I go back to the guns. Meanwhile I write toyou by a guttering candle. 

Life, how I love you! What a wonderful kindly thing I could make of youto-night. Strangely the vision has come to me of all that you mean. NowI could write. So soon you may go from me or be changed into a form ofexistence which all my training has taught me to dread. After death isthere only nothingness? I think that for those who have missed love inthis life there must be compensations--the little children whom theyought to have had, perhaps. To-day, after so many weeks, I have seenlittle children again. 

And yet, so strange a havoc does this war work that, if I have to "GoWest, " I shall go _proudly_ and quietly. I have seen too many men diebravely to make a fuss if my turn comes. A mixed passenger list oldFather Charon must have each night--Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Huns. To-morrow I shall have another sight of the greenness and then--theguns. 

I don't know whether I have been able to make any of my emotions clearto you in my letters. Terror has a terrible fascination. Up to now Ihave always been afraid--afraid of small fears. At last I meet fearitself and it stings my pride into an unpremeditated courage. 

I've just had a pile of letters from you all. How ripping it is to beremembered! Letters keep one civilised. 

It's late and I'm very tired. God bless you each and all. 

 CON. 

XXVIII

November 15th, 1916. 

Dear Father:

I've owed you a letter for some time, but I've been getting very littleleisure. You can't send steel messages to the Kaiser and love-notes toyour family in the same breath. 

I am amazed at the spirit you three are showing and almighty proud thatyou can muster such courage. I suppose none of us quite realised ourstrength till it came to the test. There was a time when we all doubtedour own heroism. I think we were typical of our age. Every novel of thepast ten years has been more or less a study in sentiment andself-distrust. We used to wonder what kind of stuff Drake's men weremade of that they could jest while they died. We used to contrastourselves with them to our own disfavour. Well, we know now that whenthere's a New World to be discovered we can still rise up reincarnatedinto spiritual pirates. It wasn't the men of our age who were at fault, but the New World that was lacking. Our New World is the Kingdom ofHeroism, the doors of which are flung so wide that the meanest of us mayenter. I know men out here who are the dependable daredevils of theirbrigades, who in peace times were nuisances and as soon as peace isdeclared will become nuisances again. At the moment they're fine, laughing at Death and smiling at the chance of agony. There's a man Iknow of who had a record sheet of crimes. When he was out of action hewas always drunk and up for office. To get rid of him, they put him intothe trench mortars and within a month he had won his D. C. M. He came outand went on the spree--this particular spree consisted in stripping aHighland officer of his kilts on a moonlight night. For this he wassentenced to several months in a military prison, but asked to beallowed to serve his sentence in the trenches. He came out from hispunishment a King's sergeant--which means that whatever he did nobodycould degrade him. He got this for lifting his trench mortar over theparapet when all the detachment were killed. Carrying it out into ashell-hole, he held back the Hun attack and saved the situation. He gotdrunk again, and again chose to be returned to the trenches. This timehis head was blown off while he was engaged in a special feat ofgallantry. What are you to say to such men? Ordinarily they'd beblackguards, but war lifts them into splendour. In the same way you seemild men, timid men, almost girlish men, carrying out duties which inother wars would have won V. C. 's. I don't think the soul of courageever dies out of the race any more than the capacity for love. All itmeans is that the occasion is not present. For myself I try to analysemy emotions; am I simply numb, or do I imitate other people's coolnessand shall I fear life again when the war is ended? There is noexplanation save the great army phrase "Carry on. " We "carry on"because, if we don't, we shall let other men down and put their lives indanger. And there's more than that--we all want to live up to thestandard that prompted us to come. 

One talks about splendour--but war isn't splendid except in theindividual sense. A man by his own self-conquest can make it splendidfor himself, but in the massed sense it's squalid. There's nothingsplendid about a battlefield when the fight is ended--shreds of whatonce were men, tortured, levelled landscapes--the barbaric loneliness ofHell. I shall never forget my first dead man. He was a signallingofficer, lying in the dawn on a muddy hill. I thought he was asleep atfirst, but when I looked more closely, I saw that his shoulder blade wasshowing white through his tunic. He was wearing black boots. It's odd, but the sight of black boots have the same effect on me now that blackand white stripes had in childhood. I have the superstitious feelingthat to wear them would bring me bad luck. 

Tonight we've been singing in parts, Back in the Dear Dead Days BeyondRecall--a mournful kind of ditty to sing under the circumstances--somournful that we had to have a game of five hundred to cheer us up. 

It's now nearly 2 a. M. , and I have to go out to the guns again before Igo to bed. I carry your letters about in my pockets and read them at oddintervals in all kinds of places that you can't imagine. 

Cheer up and remember that I'm quite happy. I wish you could be with mefor just one day to understand. 

 Yours, CON. 

XXIX

December 3rd, 1916. 

Dear Boys:

By this time you will be all through your exams and I hope have bothpassed. It'll be splendid if you can go together to the same station. You envy me, you say; well, I rather envy you. I'd like to be with you. You, at least, don't have Napoleon's fourth antagonist with which tocontend--mud. But at present I'm clean and billeted in an estaminet, ina not too bad little village. There's an old mill and still olderchurch, and the usual farmhouses with the indispensable pile of manureunder the front windows. We shall have plenty of hard work here, lickingour men into shape and re-fitting. 

You know how I've longed to sleep between sheets; I can now, but findthem so cold that I still use my sleeping bag--such is humaninconsistency. But yesterday I had a boiling bath--as good a bath ascould be found in a New York hotel--and I am CLEAN. 

I woke up this morning to hear some one singing CaseyJones--consequently I thought of former Christmases. My mind has beentravelling back very much of late. Suddenly I see something here whichreminds me of the time when E. And I were at Lisieux, or even of ourSaturday excursions to Nelson when we were all together at the ranch. 

Did I tell you that B. , our officer who was wounded two months ago, hasjust returned to us. This morning he got news that his young brother hasbeen killed in the place which we have left. I wonder when we shall growtired of stabbing and shooting and killing. It seems to me that the warcannot end in less than two years. 

I have made myself nice to the Brigade interpreter and he has found mea delightful room with electric light and a fire. It's in an oldfarmhouse with a brick terrace in front. My room is on the ground floorand tile-paved. The chairs are rush-bottomed and there are old quaintchina plates on the shelves. There is also a quite charmingmademoiselle. So you see, you don't need to pity me any more. 

Just at present I'm busy getting up the Brigade Christmas Entertainment. The Colonel asked me to do it, otherwise I should have said _no_, as Iwant all the time I can get to myself. You can't think how jolly it isto sit again in a room which is temporarily yours after living indug-outs, herded side by side with other men. I can be _me_ now, and nota soldier of thousands when I write. You shall hear from me again soon. Hope you're having a ripping time in London. 

 Yours ever, CON. 

XXX

December 5th, 1916. 

DEAREST M. :

I've just come in from my last tour of inspection as orderly officer, and it's close on midnight. I'm getting this line off to you to let youknow that I expect to get my nine days' leave about the beginning ofJanuary. How I wish it were possible to have you in London when Iarrive, or, failing that, to spend my leave in New York!

To-morrow I make an early start on horseback for a market of theold-fashioned sort which is held at a town near by. Can you dimlypicture me with my groom, followed by a mess-cart, going from stall tostall and bartering with the peasants? It'll be rather good fun andsomething quite out of my experience. 

Christmas will be over by the time you get this, and I do hope that youhad a good one. I paused to talk to the other officers; they say thatthey are sure that you are very beautiful and have a warm heart, andwould like to send them a five-storey layer cake, half a dozen bottlesof port and one Paris chef. At present I am the Dives of the mess anddole out luxuries to these Lazaruses. 

Good-bye for the present. 

 Yours ever lovingly, CON. 

XXXI

December 6th, 1916. 

Dearest M. :

I've just undone your Christmas parcels, and already I am wearing thewaistcoat and socks, and my mouth is hot with the ginger. 

I expect to get leave for England on January 10th. I do wish it might bepossible for some of you to cross the ocean and be in London withme--and I don't see what there is to prevent you. Unless the war endssooner than any of us expect, it is not likely that I shall get anotherleave in less than nine months. So, if you want to come and if there'stime when you receive this letter, just hop on a boat and let's see whatLondon looks like together. 

I wonder what kind of a Christmas you'll have. I shall picture it all. You may hear me tiptoeing up the stairs if you listen very hard. Wheredoes the soul go in sleep? Surely mine flies back to where all of youdear people are. 

I came back to my farm yesterday to find a bouquet of paper flowers atthe head of my bed with a note pinned on it. Over my fire-place was hunga pathetic pair of farm-girls' heavy Sunday boots, all brightlypolished, with two other notes pinned on them. The Feast of St. Nicholason December 7th is an opportunity for unmarried men to be reminded thatthere are unmarried girls in the world--wherefore the flowers. I enclosethe notes. Keep them, --they may be useful for a book some day. 

I'm having a pretty good rest, and am still in my old farmhouse. 

 Love to all. CON. 

XXXII

December 15th, 1916. 

Dearest All:

At the present I'm just where mother hoped I'd be--in a deep dug-outabout twenty feet down--we're trying to get a fire lighted, andconsequently the place is smoked out. Where I'll be for Christmas Idon't know, but I hope by then to be in billets. I've just come backfrom the trenches, where I've been observing. The mud is not nearly sobad where I am now, and with a few days' more work, we should be quitecomfortable. You'll have received my cable about my getting leavesoon--I'm wondering whether the Atlantic is sufficiently quiet for anyof you to risk a crossing. 

Poor Basil! Your letter was the first news I got of his death. I musthave watched the attack in which he lost his life. One wonders now howit was that some instinct did not warn me that one of those khaki dotsjumping out of the trenches was the cousin who stayed with us in London. 

I'm wondering what this mystery of the German Chancellor is allabout--some peace proposals, I suppose--which are sure to provebombastic and unacceptable. It seems to us out here as though the warmust go on forever. Like a boy's dream of the far-off freedom ofmanhood, the day appears when we shall step out into the old liberty ofowning our own lives. What a celebration we'll have when I come home! Ican't quite grasp the joy of it. 

I've got to get this letter off quite soon if it's to go to-day. Itought to reach, you by January 12th or thereabouts. You may be sure mythoughts will have been with you on Christmas day. I shall look back andremember all the by-gone good times and then plan for Christmas, 1917. God keep us all. 

 Ever yours, CON. 

XXXIII

December 18th, 1916. 

My Dearest M. :

I always feel when I write a joint letter to the family that I'mcheating each one of you, but it's so very difficult to get time towrite as often as I'd like. It's a week to Christmas and I picture thebeginnings of the preparations. I can look back and remember so manysuch preparations, especially when we were kiddies in London. What goodtimes one has in a life! I've been sitting with my groom by the fireto-night while he dried my clothes. I've mentioned him to you before ashaving lived in Nelson, and worked at the Silver King mine. We both grewecstatic over British Columbia. 

I am hoping all the time that the boys may be in England at the time Iget my leave--I hardly dare hope that any of you will be there. But itwould he grand if you could manage it--I long very much to see you allagain. I can just imagine my first month home again. I shan't let any ofyou work. I shall be the incurable boy. I've spent the best part ofto-day out in No Man's Land, within seventy yards of the Huns. Quite anexperience, I assure you, and one that I wouldn't have missed forworlds. I'll have heaps to write into novels one day--the vividest kindof local colour. Just at present I have nothing to read but theChristmas number of the _Strand_. It makes me remember the time when wechildren raced for the latest development of _The Hound of theBaskervilles_, and so many occasions when I had one of "those sniffycolds" and sat by the Highbury fire with a book. Good days, those!

I'm just off to bed now, and will finish this to-morrow. Bed is mygreatest luxury nowadays. 

December 19th. 

The book and chocolate just came, and a bunch of New York papers. Allwere most welcome. I was longing for something to read. To-morrow I haveto go forward to observe. Two of our officers are on leave, so it makesthe rest of us work pretty hard. What do you think of the Kaiser'sabsurd peace proposals? The man must be mad. 

 The best of love, CON. 

XXXIV

December 20th, 1916. 

Dear Mr. T. :

Just back from a successful argument with Fritz, to find your kind goodwishes. It's rather a lark out here, though a lark which may turnagainst you any time. I laugh a good deal more than I mope. Anythingreally horrible has a ludicrous side--it's like Mark Twain's humour--agross exaggeration. The maddest thing of all to me is that a person sowilling to be amiable as I am should be out here killing people forprinciple's sake. There's no rhyme or reason--it can't be argued. Dimlyone thinks he sees what is right and leaves father and mother and home, as though it were for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. Perhaps it is. Ifone didn't pin his faith to that "perhaps"--. One can't explain. 

A merry Christmas to you. Yours very sincerely, CONINGSBY DAWSON. 

XXXV

December 20th, 1916. 

Dear Mr. A. D. :

I've just come in from an argument with Fritz when your chocolate formedmy meal. You were very kind to think of me and to send it, and you wereextraordinarily understanding in the letter that you sent me. One's lifeout here is like a pollarded tree--all the lower branches are gone--onegazes on great nobilities, on the fascinating horror of Eternitysometimes--I said horror, but it's often fine in its spaciousness--onegazes on many inverted splendours of Titans, but it's giddy work beingso high and rarefied, and all the gentle past seems gone. That's why itis pleasant in this grimy anonymity of death and courage to getreminders, such as your letter, that one was once localised and had afamiliar history. If I come back, I shall be like Rip Van Winkle, or aRobinson Crusoe--like any and all of the creatures of legend and historyto whom abnormality has grown to seem normal. If you can imagineyourself living in a world in which every day is a demonstration of aPuritan's conception of what happens when the last trump sounds, thenyou have some idea of my queer situation. One has come to a point whendeath seems very inconsiderable and only failure to do one's duty is anutter loss. Love and the future, and all the sweet and tender dreams ofby-gone days are like a house in which the blinds are lowered and fromwhich the sight has gone. Landscapes have lost their beauty, everythingGod-made and man-made is destroyed except man's power to endure with asmile the things he once most dreaded, because he believes that only somay he be righteous in his own eyes. How one has longed for that sureconfidence in the petty failings of little living--the confidence tobelieve that he can stand up and suffer for principle! God has given allmen who are out here that opportunity--the supremest that can be hopedfor--so, in spite of exile, Christmas for most of us will be a happyday. Does one see more truly life's worth on a battlefield? I often askmyself that question. Is the contempt that is hourly shown for life thereal standard of life's worth? I shrug my shoulders at my ownunanswerable questions--all I know is that I move daily with men whohave everything to live for who, nevertheless, are urged by anunconscious magnanimity to die. I don't think any of our dead pitythemselves--but they would have done so if they had faltered in theirchoice. One lives only from sunrise to sunrise, but there's a more realhappiness in this brief living than I ever knew before, because it is soexactingly worth while. 

Thank you again for your kindness. Very sincerely yours, C. D. 

The suggestion that we might all meet in London in January, 1917, was ahope rather than an expectation. We received a cable from France onSunday, December 17th, 1916, and left New York on December 30th. We weremet in London by the two sailor-sons, who were expecting appointments atany moment, and Coningsby arrived late in the evening of January 13th. He was unwell when he arrived, having had a near touch of pneumonia. Theday before he left the front he had been in action, with a temperatureof 104. There were difficulties about getting his leave at the exacttime appointed, but these he overcame by exchanging leave with abrother-officer. He travelled from the Front all night in a windowlesstrain, and at Calais was delayed by a draft of infantry which he had totake over to England. The consequence of this delay was that the meetingat the railway station, of which he had so long dreamed, did not comeoff. We spent a long day, going from station to station, misled byimperfect information as to the arrival of troop trains. At VictoriaStation we saw two thousand troops arrive on leave, men caked withtrench-mud, but he was not among them. We reluctantly returned to ourhotel in the late afternoon and gave up expecting him. There was all thetime a telegram at the hotel from him, giving the exact place and timeof his arrival, but it was not delivered until it was too late to meethim. He arrived at ten o'clock, and at the same time his two brothers, who had been summoned in the morning to Southampton, entered the hotel, having been granted special leave to return to London. A night's restdid wonders for Coningsby, and the next day his spirits were as high asin the old days of joyous holiday. During the next eight days we livedat a tense pitch of excitement. We went to theatres, dined inrestaurants, met friends, and heard from his lips a hundred details ofhis life which could not be communicated in letters. We were allthrilled by the darkened heroic London through which we moved, theLondon which bore its sorrows so proudly, and went about its daily lifewith such silent courage. We visited old friends to whom the war hadbrought irreparable bereavements, but never once heard the voice ofself-pity, of murmur or complaint. To me it was an incredible England;an England purged of all weakness, stripped of flabbiness, regeneratedby sacrifice. I had dreamed of no such transformation by anything I hadread in American newspapers and magazines. I think no one can imaginethe completeness of this rebirth of the soul of England who has notdwelt, if only for a few days, among its people. 

Coningsby's brief leave expired all too soon. We saw him off fromFolkestone, and while we were saying good-bye to him, his two brotherswere on their way to their distant appointments with the Royal NavalMotor Patrol in the North of Scotland. We left Liverpool for New York onJanuary 27th, and while at sea heard of the diplomatic break betweenAmerica and Germany. The news was received on board the _S. S. St. Paul_with rejoicing. It was Sunday, and the religious service on boardconcluded with the Star-Spangled Banner. 

XXXVI

December 28th, 1916. 

Dearest All:

I'm writing you this letter because I expect to-night is a busy-packingone with you. The picture is in my mind of you all. How splendid it isof you to come! I never thought you would really, not even in my wildestdream of optimism. There have been so many times when I scarcely thoughtthat I would ever see you again--now the unexpected and hoped-forhappens. It's ripping!

I've put in an application for special leave in case the ordinary leaveshould be cut off. I think I'm almost certain to arrive by the 11th. Won't we have a time? I wonder what we'll want to do most--sit quiet orgo to theatres? The nine days of freedom--the wonderful nine days--willpass with most tragic quickness. But they'll be days to remember as longas life lasts. 

Shall I see you standing on the station when I puff into London--or willit be Folkestone where we meet--or shall I arrive before you? I somehowthink it will be you who will meet me at the barrier at Charing Cross, and we'll taxi through the darkened streets down the Strand, and back toour privacy. How impossible it sounds--like a vision of heart's desirein the night. 

Far, far away I see the fine home-coming, like a lamp burning in a darknight. I expect we shall all go off our heads with joy and be madderthan ever. Who in the old London days would have imagined such a ninedays of happiness in the old places as we are to have together. 

 God bless you, till we meet, CON. 

XXXVII

January 4th, 1917. 

10. 30 p. M. 

MY DEAREST ONES:

This letter is written to welcome you to England, but I may be with youwhen it is opened. It was glorious news to hear that you were coming--Iwas only playing a forlorn bluff when I sent those cables. You're on thesea at present and should be half way over. Our last trip over togetheryou marvelled at the apparent indifference of the soldiers on board, andnow you're coming to meet one of your own fresh from the Front. Achange!

O what a nine days we're going to have together--the most wonderful thatwere ever spent. I dream of them, tell myself tales about them, livethem over many times in imagination before they are realised. SometimesI'm going to have no end of sleep, sometimes I'm going to keep awakeevery second, sometimes I'm going to sit quietly by a fire, andsometimes I'm going to taxi all the time. I can't fit your faces intothe picture--it seems too unbelievable that we are to be together onceagain. To-day I've been staging our meeting--if you arrive first, andthen if I arrive before you, and lastly if we both hit London on thesame day. You mustn't expect me to be a sane person. You're threerippers to do this--and I hope you'll have an easy journey. The onlyghost is the last day, when the leave train pulls out of Charing Cross. But we'll do that smiling, too; C'est la guerre. 

 Yours always and ever, CON. 

XXXVIII

January 6th, 1917. 

MY DEAR ONES:

I have just seen a brother officer aboard the ex-London bus en route forBlighty. How I wished I could have stepped on board that ex-Londonperambulator to-night! "Pickerdilly Cirkuss, 'Ighbury, 'Ighgate, Welsh'Arp--all the wye. " O my, what a time I'll have when I meet you! I shallfeel as though if anything happens to me after my return you'll be ableto understand so much more bravely. These blinkered letters, with onlywriting and no touch of live hands, convey so little. When we've had agood time together and sat round the fire and talked interminably you'llbe able to read so much more between the lines of my future letters. To-morrow you ought to land in England, and to-morrow night you shouldsleep in London. I am trying to swop my leave with another man, otherwise it won't come till the 15th. I am looking forward every hourto those miraculous nine days which we are to have together. You can'timagine with your vividest imagination the contrast between nine dayswith you in London and my days where I am now. A battalion went byyesterday, marching into action, and its band was playing I've aSneakin' Feelin' in My Heart That I Want to Settle Down. We all havethat sneaking feeling from time to time. I tell myself wonderful storiesin the early dark mornings and become the architect of the mostwonderful futures. 

I'm coming to join you just as soon as I know how--at the worst I'll bein London on the 16th of this month. 

 Ever yours, CON. 

_The following letters were written after Coningsby had met his familyin London. _

XXXIX

January 24th, 1917. 

MY DEAR ONES:

I have had a chance to write you sooner than I expected, as I stoppedthe night where I disembarked, and am catching my train to-day. 

It's strange to be back and under orders after nine days' freedom. Directly I landed I was detailed to march a party--it was that that mademe lose my train--not that I objected, for I got one more sleep betweensheets. I picked up on the boat in the casual way one does, with threeother officers, so on landing we made a party to dine together, and hada very decent evening. I wasn't wanting to remember too much then, sothat was why I didn't write letters. 

What good times we have to look back on and how much to be thankful for, that we met altogether. Now we must look forward to the summer and, perhaps, the end of the war. What a mad joy will sweep across the worldon the day that peace is declared!

This visit will have made you feel that you have a share in all that'shappening over here and are as real a part of it as any of us. I'mawfully proud of you for your courage. 

 Yours lovingly, CON. 

XL

January 26th, 1917. 

MY VERY DEAR ONES:

Here I am back--my nine days' leave a dream. I got into our wagon-lineslast night after midnight, having had a cold ride along frozen roadsthrough white wintry country. I was only half-expected, so mysleeping-bag hadn't been unpacked. I had to wake my batman and trampabout a mile to the billet; by the time I got there every one wasasleep, so I spread out my sleeping-sack and crept in very quietly. Forthe few minutes before my eyes closed I pictured London, the taxis, thegay parties, the mystery of lights. I was roused this morning with thenews that I had to go up to the gun-position at once. I stole justsufficient time to pick up a part of my accumulated mail, then got on myhorse and set out. At the guns, I found that I was due to report asliaison officer, so here I am in the trenches again writing to you bycandle-light. How wonderfully we have bridged the distance in spendingthose nine whole days together. And now it is over, and I am back in thetrenches, and to-morrow you're sailing for New York. 

I can't tell you what the respite has meant to me. There have been timeswhen my whole past life has seemed a myth and the future an endlessprospect of carrying on. Now I can distantly hope that the old days willreturn. 

When I was in London half my mind was at the Front; now that I'm back inthe trenches half my mind is in London. I re-live our gay timestogether; I go to cosy little dinners; I sit with you in the stalls, listening to the music; then I tumble off to sleep, and dream, and wakeup to find the dream a delusion. It's a fine and manly contrast, however, between the game one plays out here and the fretfultrivialities of civilian life. 

XLI

January 27th. 

I got as far as this and then "something" happened. Twenty-four hourshave gone by and once more it's nearly midnight and I write to you bycandle-light. Since last night I've been with these infantryboy-officers who are doing such great work in such a careless spirit ofjolliness. Any softness which had crept into me during my nine days ofhappiness has gone. I'm glad to be out here and wouldn't wish to beanywhere else till the war is ended. 

It's a week to-day since we were at _Charlie's Aunt_--such a cheerfullittle party! I expect the boys are doing their share of remembering toosomewhere on the sea at present. I know you are, as you round the coastof Ireland and set out for the Atlantic. 

I've not been out of my clothes for three days and I've another day togo yet. I brought my haversack into the trenches with me; on opening itI found that some kind hands had slipped into it some clean socks and abottle of Horlick's Malted Milk tablets. 

The signallers in a near-by dug-out are singing Keep the Home-FiresBurning Till the Boys Come Home. That's what we're all doing, isn'tit--you at your end and we at ours? The brief few days of possessingmyself are over and once more stern duty lies ahead. But I thank God forthe chance I've had to see again those whom I love, and to be able totell them with my own lips some of the bigness of our life at the Front. No personal aims count beside the great privilege which is ours to carryon until the war is over. 

All my thoughts are with you--so many memories of kindness. I keep onpicturing things I ought to have done--things I ought to have told you. Always I can see, Oh, so vividly, the two sailor brothers wavinggood-bye as the train moved off through the London dusk, and then thatother and forlorner group of three, standing outside the dock gates withthe sentry like the angel in Eden, turning them back from happiness. With an extraordinary aloofness I watched myself moving like a puppetaway from you whom I love most dearly in all the world--going away as ifgoing were a thing so usual. 

I'm asking myself again if there isn't some new fineness of spirit whichwill develop from this war and survive it. In London, at a distancefrom all this tragedy of courage, I felt that I had slipped back to alower plane; a kind of flabbiness was creeping into my blood--the oldselfish fear of life and love of comfort. It's odd that out here, wherethe fear of death should supplant the fear of life, one somehow risesinto a contempt for everything which is not bravest. There's no doubtthat the call for sacrifice, and perhaps the supreme sacrifice, cantransform men into a nobility of which they themselves are unconscious. That's the most splendid thing of all, that they themselves are unawareof their fineness. 

I'm now waiting to be relieved and am hurrying to finish this so that Imay mail it as soon as I get back to the battery. There's a whole sackof letters and parcels waiting for me there, and I'm as eager to get tothem as a kiddy to inspect his Christmas stocking. I always undo thestring and wrappings with a kind of reverence, trying to picture thedear kneeling figures who did them up. In London I didn't dare to letmyself go with you--I couldn't say all that was in my heart--it wouldn'thave been wise. Don't ever doubt that the tenderness was there. Eventhough one is only a civilian in khaki, some of the soldier's sternnessbecomes second nature. 

All the country is covered with snow--it's brilliant clear weather, more like America than Europe. I'm feeling strong as a horse, ever somuch better than I felt when on leave. Life is really tremendously worthliving, in spite of the war. 

XLII

January 28th. 

I'm back at the battery, sitting by a cosy fire. I might be up atKootenay by the look of my surroundings. I'm in a shack with a reallytruly floor, and a window looking out on moonlit whiteness. If it wasn'tfor the tapping of the distant machine guns--tapping that always soundsto me like the nailing up of coffins--I might be here for pleasure. Inimagination I can see your great ship, with all its portholes aglare, ploughing across the darkness to America. The dear sailor brothers Ican't quite visualise; I can only see them looking so upright and palewhen we said good-bye. It's getting late and the fire's dying. I'm halfasleep; I've not been out of my clothes for three nights. I shall tellmyself a story of the end of the war and our next meeting--it'll lastfrom the time that I creep into my sack until I close my eyes. It's aglorious life. 

 Yours very lovingly, CON

XLIII

January 31st, 1917. 

DEAR MR. AND MRS. M. :

It was extremely good of you to remember me. I got back from leave inLondon on the 26th and found the cigarettes waiting for me. One hasn'tgot an awful lot of pleasures left, but smoking is one of them. I feelparticularly doggy when I open my case and find my initials on them. 

I expect you'll have heard all the news of my leave long before thisreaches you. We had a splendid time and the greatest of luck. My sailorbrothers were with me all but two days, and my people were in Englandonly a few days before I arrived. 

This is a queer adventure for a peaceable person like myself--it blotsout all the past and reduces the future to a speck. One hardly hopesthat things will ever be different, but looks forward to interminableyears of carrying on. My leave rather corrected that frame of mind; itcame as a surprise to be forced to realise that not all the world wasliving under orders on woman less, childless battlefields. But we don'tneed any pity--we manage our good times, and are sorry for the men whoaren't here, for it's a wonderful thing to have been chosen tosacrifice and perhaps to die that the world of the future may be happierand kinder. 

This letter is rather disjointed; I'm in charge of the battery for thetime, and messages keep on coming in, and one has to rush out to givethe order to fire. 

It's an American night--snow-white and piercing, with a frigid moonsailing quietly. I think the quiet beauty of the sky is about the onlything in Nature that we do not scar and destroy with our fighting. 

Good-bye, and thank you ever so much. 

 Yours very sincerely, CONINGSBY DAWSON. 

XLIV

February 1st, 1917. 

11 p. M. 

DEAR FATHER:

Your picture of the black days when no letter comes from me sets me offscribbling to you at this late hour. All to-day I've been having a coldbut amusing time at the O. P. (Forward Observation Post). It seems brutalto say it, but taking potshots at the enemy when they present themselvesis rather fun. When you watch them scattering like ants before theshell whose direction you have ordered, you somehow forget to think ofthem as individuals, any more than the bear-hunter thinks of the cubsthat will be left motherless. You watch your victims through yourglasses as God might watch his mad universe. Your skill in directingfire makes you what in peace times would be called a murderer. Curious!You're glad, and yet at close quarters only in hot blood would you hurta man. 

I'd been back for a little over an hour when I had to go forward againto guide in some guns. The country was dazzlingly white in themoonlight. As far as eye could see every yard was an old battlefield;beneath the soft white fleece of snow lay countless unburied bodies. Like frantic fingers tearing at the sky, all along the horizon, Hunlights were shooting up and drifting across our front. Tap-tap-tappitywent the machine-guns; whoo-oo went the heavies, and they always stamplike angry bulls. I had to come back by myself across the heroiccorruption which the snow had covered. All the way I asked myself whywas I not frightened. What has happened to me? Ghosts should walk hereif anywhere. Moreover, I know that I shall be frightened again when thewar is ended. Do you remember how you once offered me money to walkthrough the Forest of Dean after dark, and I wouldn't? I wouldn't ifyou offered it to me now. You remember Meredith's lines in "The Woods ofWestermain":

 "All the eyeballs under hoods Shroud you in their glare; Enter these enchanted woods You who dare. "

Maybe what re-creates one for the moment is the British officer'suniform, and even more the fact that you are not asked, but expected, todo your duty. So I came back quite unruffled across battered trenchesand silent mounds to write this letter to you. 

My dear father, I'm over thirty, and yet just as much a little boy asever. I still feel overwhelmingly dependent on your good opinion andlove. I'm glad that they are black days when you have no letters fromme. I love to think of the rush to the door when the postman rings andthe excited shouting up the stairs, "Quick, one from Con. "

February 2nd. 

You see by the writing how tired I was when I reached this point. It'snearly twenty-four hours later and again night. The gramophone isplaying an air from _La Tosca_ to which the guns beat out a bassaccompaniment. I close my eyes and picture the many times I have heardthe (probably) German orchestras of Broadway Joy Palaces play that samemusic. How incongruous that I should be listening to it here and underthese circumstances! It must have been listened to so often by gaycrowds in the beauty places of the world. A romantic picture grows up inmy mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth in evening dress, lampstwinkling through trees, far off the velvety shadow of water andmountains, and as a voice to it all, that air from _La Tosca_. I canbelieve that the silent people near by raise themselves up in theirsnow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before thedream of life was shattered. 

There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe it'scalled _To Glory_. One sees all the armies of the ages charging out ofthe middle distance with Death riding at their head. The only glory thatI have discovered in this war is in men's hearts--it's not external. Were one to paint the spirit of this war he would depict a mudlandscape, blasted trees, an iron sky; wading through the slush andshell-holes would come a file of bowed figures, more like outcasts fromthe Embankment than soldiers. They're loaded down like pack animals, their shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go onand go on. There's no "To Glory" about what we're doing out here;there's no flash of swords or splendour of uniforms. There are only verytired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired men whocould never again pass an insurance test, a mob of brokencounter-jumpers, ragged ex-plumbers and quite unheroic persons. We'recivilians in khaki, but because of the ideals for which we fight we'vemanaged to acquire soldiers' hearts. 

My flow of thought was interrupted by a burst of song in which I wascompelled to join. We're all writing letters around one candle; suddenlythe O. C. Looked up and began, God Be With You Till We Meet Again. Wesang it in parts. It was in Southport, when I was about nine years old, that I first heard that sung. You had gone for your first trip toAmerica, leaving a very lonely family behind you. We children werescared to death that you'd be drowned. One evening, coming back from awalk on the sand-hills, we heard voices singing in a garden, God Be WithYou Till We Meet Again. The words and the soft dusk, and the vaguefigures in the English summer garden, seemed to typify the terror of allpartings. We've said good-bye so often since, and God has been with us. I don't think any parting was more hard than our last at the prosaicdock-gates with the cold wind of duty blowing, and the sentry barringyour entrance, and your path leading back to America while mine led onto France. But you three were regular soldiers--just as much soldiers aswe chaps who were embarking. One talks of our armies in the field, butthere are the other armies, millions strong, of mothers and fathers andsisters, who keep their eyes dry, treasure muddy letters beneath theirpillows, offer up prayers and wait, wait, wait so eternally for God toopen another door. 

To-morrow I again go forward, which means rising early and taking a longplod through the snows; that's one reason for not writing any more, andanother is that our one poor candle is literally on its last legs. 

Your poem, written years ago when the poor were marching in London, isoften in my mind:

 "Yesterday and to-day Have been heavy with labour and sorrow; I should faint if I did not see The day that is after to-morrow. "

And there's that last verse which prophesied utterly the spirit in whichwe men at the Front are fighting to-day:

 "And for me, with spirit elate The mire and the fog I press thorough, For Heaven shines under the cloud Of the day that is after to-morrow. "

We civilians who have been taught so long to love our enemies and dogood to them who hate us--much too long ever to make professionalsoldiers--are watching with our hearts in our eyes for that day whichconies after to-morrow. Meanwhile we plod on determinedly, hoping forthe hidden glory. 

 Yours very lovingly, Con. 

XLV

February 3rd, 1917. 

Dear Misses W. :

You were very kind to remember me at Christmas. _Seventeen_ was readwith all kinds of gusto by all my brother officers. It's still beingborrowed. 

I've been back from leave a few days now and am settling back tobusiness again. It was a trifle hard after over-eating and undersleepingmyself for nine days, and riding everywhere with my feet up in taxis. Iwas the wildest little boy. Here it's snowy and bitter. We wear scarvesround our ears to keep the frost away and dream of fires a mile high. All I ask, when the war is ended, is to be allowed to sit asleep in abig armchair and to be left there absolutely quiet. Sleep, which wecrave so much at times, is only death done up in sample bottles. Perhapssome of these very weary men who strew our battlefields are glad to lieat last at endless leisure. 

Good-bye, and thank you. 

 Yours very sincerely, Con. 

XLVI

February 4th, 1917. 

My Dearest Mother:

Somewhere in the distance I can hear a piano going and men's voicessinging A Perfect Day. It's queer how music creates a world for you inwhich you are not, and makes you dreamy. I've been sitting by a fire andthinking of all the happy times when the total of desire seemed almostwithin one's grasp. It never is--one always, always misses it and has torub the dust from the eyes, recover one's breath and set out on thesearch afresh. I suppose when you grow very old you learn the lesson ofsitting quiet, and the heart stops beating and the total of desire comesto you. And yet I can remember so many happy days, when I was a child inthe summer and later at Kootenay. One almost thought he had caught thesecret of carrying heaven in his heart. 

By the time this reaches you I'll be in the line again, but for thepresent I'm undergoing a special course of training. You can't hear themost distant sound of guns, and if it wasn't for the pressure of study, similar to that at _Kingston_, one would be very rested. 

Sunday of all days is the one when I remember you most. You're justsitting down to mid-day dinner, --I've made the calculation fordifference of time. You're probably saying how less than a month ago wewere in London. That doesn't sound true even when I write it. I wonderhow your old familiar surroundings strike you. It's terrible to comedown from the mountain heights of a great elation like our ten days inLondon. I often think of that with regard to myself when the war isended. There'll be a sense of dissatisfaction when the old lost comfortsare regained. There'll be a sense of lowered manhood. The stupendousterrors of Armageddon demand less courage than the uneventful terror ofthe daily commonplace. There's something splendid and exhilarating ingoing forward among bursting shells--we, who have done all that, knowthat when the guns have ceased to roar our blood will grow moresluggish and we'll never be such men again. Instead of getting up in themorning and hearing your O. C. Say, "You'll run a line into trenchso-and-so to-day and shoot up such-and-such Hun wire, " you'll hearnecessity saying, "You'll work from breakfast to dinner and earn yourdaily bread. And you'll do it to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrowworld without end. Amen. " They never put that forever and forever partinto their commands out here, because the Amen for any one of us may beonly a few hours away. But the big immediate thing is so much easier todo than the prosaic carrying on without anxiety--which is your game. Ibegin to understand what you have had to suffer now that R. And E. Arereally at war too. I get awfully anxious about them. I never knew beforethat either of them owned so much of my heart. I get furious when Iremember that they might get hurt. I've heard of a Canadian who joinedwhen he learnt that his best friend had been murdered by Hun bayonets. He came to get his own back and was the most reckless man in hisbattalion. I can understand his temper now. We're all of us in danger ofslipping back into the worship of Thor. 

I'll write as often as I can while here, but I don't get much time--soyou'll understand. It's the long nights when one sits up to take thefiring in action that give one the chance to be a decent correspondent. 

My birthday comes round soon, doesn't it? Good heavens, how ancient I'mgetting and without any "grow old along with me" consolation. Well, togrow old is all in the job of living. 

Good-bye, and God bless you all. 

 Yours ever, Con. 

XLVII

February 4th, 1917. 

Dear Mr. B. :

I have been intending to write to you for a very long time, but as mostof one's writing is done when one ought to be asleep, and sleep next toeating is one of our few remaining pleasures, my intended letter hasremained in my head up to now. On returning from a nine days' leave toLondon the other day, however, I found two letters from you awaiting meand was reproached into effort. 

War's a queer game--not at all what one's civilian mind imagined; it'sfar more horrible and less exciting. The horrors which the civilian minddreads most are mutilation and death. Out here we rarely think aboutthem; the thing which wears on one most and calls out his gravestcourage is the endless sequence of physical discomfort. Not to be ableto wash, not to be able to sleep, to have to be wet and cold for longperiods at a stretch, to find mud on your person, in your food, to haveto stand in mud, see mud, sleep in mud and to continue to smile--that'swhat tests courage. Our chaps are splendid. They're not the hair-brainedidiots that some war-correspondents depict from day to day. They'reperfectly sane people who know to a fraction what they're up against, but who carry on with a grim good-nature and a determination to win witha smile. I never before appreciated as I do to-day the latent capacityfor big-hearted endurance that is in the heart of every man. Here areapparently quite ordinary chaps--chaps who washed, liked theatres, lovedkiddies and sweethearts, had a zest for life--they're bankrupt of allpleasures except the supreme pleasure of knowing that they're doing theordinary and finest thing of which they are capable. There are millionsto whom the mere consciousness of doing their duty has brought anheretofore unexperienced peace of mind. For myself I was never happierthan I am at present; there's a novel zip added to life by the dailyrisks and the knowledge that at last you're doing something into whichno trace of selfishness enters. One can only die once; the chief concernthat matters is _how_ and not _when_ you die. I don't pity the weary menwho have attained eternal leisure in the corruption of ourshell-furrowed battles; they "went West" in their supreme moment. Themen I pity are those who could not hear the call of duty and whoseconsciences will grow more flabby every day. With the brutal roar of thefirst Prussian gun the cry came to the civilised world, "Follow thoume, " just as truly as it did in Palestine. Men went to their Calvarysinging Tipperary, rubbish, rhymed doggerel, but their spirit was equalto that of any Christian martyr in a Roman amphitheatre. "Greater lovehath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend. " Ourchaps are doing that consciously, willingly, almost without bitternesstowards their enemies; for the rest it doesn't matter whether they singhymns or ragtime. They've followed their ideal--freedom--and died forit. A former age expressed itself in Gregorian chants; ours, no lesssincerely, disguises its feelings in ragtime. 

Since September I have been less than a month out of action. The gamedoesn't pall as time goes on--it fascinates. We've got to win so thatmen may never again be tortured by the ingenious inquisition of modernwarfare. The winning of the war becomes a personal affair to the chapswho are fighting. The world which sits behind the lines, buys extraspecials of the daily papers and eats three square meals a day, willnever know what this other world has endured for its safety, for no manof this other world will have the vocabulary in which to tell. But don'tfor a moment mistake me--we're grimly happy. 

What a serial I'll write for you if I emerge from this turmoil! ThankGod, my outlook is all altered. I don't want to live any longer--only tolive well. 

Good-bye and good luck. 

 Yours, Coningsby Dawson. 

XLVIII

February 5th, 1917. 

My Dearest Mother:

Aren't the papers good reading now-a-days with nothing to record butsuccess? It gives us hope that at last, anyway before the year is out, the war must end. As you know, I am at the artillery school back of thelines for a month, taking an extra course. I have been meeting a greatmany young officers from all over the world and have listened to themdiscussing their program for when peace is declared. Very few of themhave any plans or prospects. Most of them had just started on somecourse of professional training to which they won't have the energy togo back after a two years' interruption. The question one asks is howwill all these men be reabsorbed into civilian life. I'm afraid theresult will be a vast host of men with promising pasts and highlyuncertain futures. We shall be a holiday world without an income. I'mafraid the hero-worship attitude will soon change to impatience when thesoldiers beat their swords into ploughshares and then confess that theyhave never been taught to plough. That's where I shall score--by beatingmy sword into a pen. But what to write about--! Everything will seem solittle and inconsequential after seeing armies marching to mud anddeath, and people will soon get tired of hearing about that. It seems asthough war does to the individual what it does to the landscapes itattacks--obliterates everything personal and characteristic. A valley, when a battle has done with it, is nothing but earth--exactly what itwas when God said, "Let there be Light;" a man just something with amind purged of the past and ready to observe afresh. I question whethera return to old environments will ever restore to us the whole of ourold tastes and affections. War is, I think, utterly destructive. Itdoesn't even create courage--it only finds it in the soul of a man. Andyet there is one quality which will survive the war and help us to facethe temptations of peace--that same courage which most of us haveunconsciously discovered out here. 

Well, my dear, I have little news--at least, none that I can tell. I'mjust about recovered from an attack of "flu. " I want to get thoroughlyrid of it before I go back to my battery. I hope you all keep well. Godbless you all. 

 Yours ever, Con. 

XLIX

February 6th, 1917. 

My Very Dear M. :

I read in to-day's paper that U. S. A. Threatens to come over and help us. I wish she would. The very thought of the possibility fills me with joy. I've been light-headed all day. It would be so ripping to live amongpeople, when the war is ended, of whom you need not be ashamed. Somewhere deep down in my heart I've felt a sadness ever since I've beenout here, at America's lack of gallantry--it's so easy to find excusesfor not climbing to Calvary; sacrifice was always too noble to besensible. I would like to see the country of our adoption becomesplendidly irrational even at this eleventh hour in the game; it wouldredeem her in the world's eyes. She doesn't know what she's losing. Fromthese carcase-strewn fields of khaki there's a cleansing wind blowingfor the nations that have died. Though there was only one Englishmanleft to carry on the race when this war is victoriously ended, I wouldgive more for the future of England than for the future of America withher ninety millions whose sluggish blood was not stirred by the call ofduty. It's bigness of soul that makes nations great and not population. Money, comfort, limousines and ragtime are not the requisites of menwhen heroes are dying. I hate the thought of Fifth Avenue, with itspretty faces, its fashions, its smiling frivolity. America as a greatnation will die, as all coward civilisations have died, unless sheaccepts the stigmata of sacrifice, which a divine opportunity againoffers her. 

If it were but possible to show those ninety millions one battlefieldwith its sprawling dead, its pity, its marvellous forgetfulness of self, I think then--no, they wouldn't be afraid. Fear isn't the emotion onefeels--they would experience the shame of living when so many have shedtheir youth freely. This war is a prolonged moment of exultation formost of us--we are redeeming ourselves in our own eyes. To lay downone's life for one's friend once seemed impossible. All that is altered. We lay down our lives that the future generations may be good and kind, and so we can contemplate oblivion with quiet eyes. Nothing that isnoblest that the Greeks taught is unpractised by the simplest men outhere to-day. They may die childless, but their example will father theimagination of all the coming ages. These men, in the noble indignationof a great ideal, face a worse hell than the most ingenious of fanaticsever planned or plotted. Men die scorched like moths in a furnace, blownto atoms, gassed, tortured. And again other men step forward to taketheir places well knowing what will be their fate. Bodies may die, butthe spirit of England grows greater as each new soul speeds upon itsway. The battened souls of America will die and be buried. I believe thedecision of the next few days will prove to be the crisis in America'snationhood. If she refuses the pain which will save her, the cancer ofself-despising will rob her of her life. 

This feeling is strong with us. It's past midnight, but I could writeof nothing else to-night. 

God bless you. 

 Yours ever, Con.