The Winchester Command has asked me for a month and I’ll try to put in a part of it soon. Effie is due on leave immediately, but she is finding conditions changing too at her base. What has happened is that all the butterflies and the undesirables, out merely for a new sensation, have been weeded out and only the solid workers remain. "The plague of women" that tormented the military authorities during the Boer War and created endless problems in South Africa has been more drastically dealt with in this war. I wish I could tell you all the things Effie has told me, but there is a certain reticence to be observed, and amid so much that is fine and noble why insist or dwell upon the flaws? You asked about Florence in your last letter and I gave her your message. Daily I thank God for my faithful servant and friend who cares for me so tenderly, and is so understanding of all the trials of this changed, unnatural life. She is part of the House of Defence—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. She has three brothers in the war. One who had been frightfully wounded about the head and face came back convalescent the other day and I saw him here. I was afraid to go into the kitchen, knowing what the nature of his wounds had been, but so cleverly, wonderfully, had he been handled by these heaven-born surgeons who repair the waste and wreckage of war that he looked much as of yore, though with some deep scars where part of a new jaw had been grafted on. He was very quiet, as those are who have been long in the midst of unspeakable things, but when I asked him whether he was willing to go back, he just smiled. "There is nothing else to be done," he answered. "And there’s the regiment and the pals." That is the spirit of Kitchener’s Army—the spirit that lives after him, and which will bring the victory. It makes one proud to be alive and to belong to the old flag. Picture me then, Cornelia, carrying on as bravely and steadily as may be, a little rocky and homesick at times, but yet following, if afar off, in the track the boys have outlined and worn by the tramp of their brave unflinching feet. To be worthy, not only of those who have died to keep us safe and free, but of those who have been maimed and wrecked for us in the summer of their days, and have still to live with their cross upon them—that is the charge laid upon the rest of us, by the God who is watching the conflict from His secret place, biding His hour to strike. *IX* The grip of war is tightening in on our little Island, Cornelia. Soon it will be relentless.