Life, how I love you! What a wonderful kindly thing I could make of you to-night. Strangely the vision has come to me of all that you mean. Now I could write. So soon you may go from me or be changed into a form of existence which all my training has taught me to dread. After death is there only nothingness? I think that for those who have missed love in this life there must be compensations--the little children whom they ought to have had, perhaps. To-day, after so many weeks, I have seen little children again. And yet, so strange a havoc does this war work that, if I have to "Go West," I shall go _proudly_ and quietly. I have seen too many men die bravely to make a fuss if my turn comes. A mixed passenger list old Father Charon must have each night--Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Huns. To-morrow I shall have another sight of the greenness and then--the guns. I don't know whether I have been able to make any of my emotions clear to you in my letters. Terror has a terrible fascination. Up to now I have always been afraid--afraid of small fears. At last I meet fear itself 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 be remembered! 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 little leisure. You can't send steel messages to the Kaiser and love-notes to your family in the same breath.