[Illustration: DONALD HANKEY] A STUDENT IN ARMS SECOND SERIES BY DONALD HANKEY WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. ST. LOE STRACHEY EDITOR OF _THE SPECTATOR_ NEW YORK B.P. DUTTON & CO. 681 FIFTH AVENUE Published 1917 BY E.P. DUTTON & CO. CONTENTS PAGE SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 1 AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 33 I.--THE POTENTATE 37 II.--THE BAD SIDE OF MILITARY SERVICE 51 III.--THE GOOD SIDE OF "MILITARISM" 65 IV.--A MONTH'S REFLECTIONS 79 V.--ROMANCE 93 VI.--IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (I) 109 VII.--THE FEAR OF DEATH IN WAR 115 VIII.--IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (II) 127 IX.--THE WISDOM OF "A STUDENT IN ARMS" 139 X.--IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (III) 145 XI.--LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN 153 XII.--"DON'T WORRY" 165 XIII.--IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS (IV) 175 XIV.--A PASSING IN JUNE, 1915 181 XV.--MY HOME AND SCHOOL: I MY HOME 199 II SCHOOL 216 SOME NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA" 237 SOMETHING ABOUT "A STUDENT IN ARMS" BY H.M.A.H. "His life was a Romance of the most noble and beautiful kind." So says one who has known him from childhood, and into how many dull, hard and narrow lives has he not been the first to bring the element of Romance? He carried it about with him; it breathes through his writings, and this inevitable expression of it gives the saying of one of his friends, that "it is as an artist that we shall miss him most," the more significance. And does not the artist as well as the poet live forever in his works? Is not the breath of inspiration that such alone can breathe into the dull clods of their generation bound to be immortal? Meanwhile, his "Romance" is to be written and his biographer will be one whose good fortune it has been to see much of the "Student" in Bermondsey, the place that was the forcing-house of his development. In the following pages it is proposed only to give an outline of his life, and particularly the earlier and therefore to the public unknown parts. Donald Hankey was born at Brighton in 1884; he was the seventh child of his parents, and was welcomed with excitement and delight by a ready-made family of three brothers and two sisters living on his arrival amongst them. He was the youngest of them by seven years, and all had their plans for his education and future, and waited jealously for the time when he should be old enough to be removed from the loving shelter of his mother's arms and be "brought up."