How awful to have to live up against such a blank wall—no wonder she clings to the material body of her son with frantic hands that will never let him go. We got through the night at last, snatched an hour or two’s sleep, and in the morning went over to Potter’s Bar in the motor to see all that was left of the monster of the air. The pretty little village swarmed with people "out for to see" just as our town swarmed with them when we got our share of attention from Count Zeppelin. We tramped through indescribable mud to the sweet meadow where the wreckage lay; partly caught in the branches of a giant oak tree—then trailing away across the sward like the tail of some enormous rattlesnake. We did not see the engines—they had been removed in the small hours on a military truck. What we did see was the retrieval of the bodies from the wreckage—poor charred objects—perfectly unrecognisable. Mothers’ sons every one, and somewhere in Germany their homes will be desolate because they do not return. I thought of that, but the temper of the crowd was hostile and bitter, and the feeling uppermost was grim satisfaction that they had met a righteous and deserved doom. More of the dark fruits of war, the tempering and hardening of a naturally kindly people into a thirst for revenge. God send it may end soon—before we are all so changed that we shall bear no semblance to our former selves. *X* I seem to have reached the end of my letter just about the time I wrote to you last and the doctor, whom in the absence of Himself, I had to call in, ordered me to go away and take a complete rest—you know the formula—but dear God, how can we rest in a world where there is no rest, and with the thunder of the guns in our ears night and day. It is the Somme fighting now, in which we have lost so many of those we love. I think I gave up the day I got a telegram telling me Dick had been killed at Trones Wood. You remember Dick, and Isabel, that lovely pair for whom I wrote the little book, "Letters to a War Bride." I don’t quite know how to tell you what he was like—a most gallant gentle Knight without fear and without reproach—yet so full of fun, that somehow laughter sang in the heart wherever he came—the laughter that doeth good like a medicine. The last time I saw him, Isabel had come down from Palace Gate to spend a few days and Dick came marching through with his Fusiliers, en route from Colchester to France. He and his Major dined with us—and I never saw him again—nor ever will see him now, till we meet on the other side. No doubt we are naturally drawn towards those whom nature has richly endowed. He was as handsome as a dream—tall, dark with flashing tender eyes and a smile that was never far away from his lips. A man of peace if ever there was one, yet he was dedicated to war, in order that peace may be established for all time as "one of those things that cannot be shaken."