I do know that George suffered profoundly from the first day of the war until his death at the end of it. He must have realized the awfulness of the Cant and degradation, for he occasionally talked about the yahoos of the world having got loose, and seized control, and by Jove, he was right. I shan’t attempt to describe the sinister degradation of English life in the last two years of the War; for one thing I was mostly out of England, and for another Lawrence has done it once and for all in the chapter called “The Nightmare” in his book “Kangaroo.” In George’s case, the suffering which was common to all decent men and women was increased and complicated and rendered more torturing by his personal problems, which somehow became related to the War. You must remember that he did not believe in the alleged causes for which the War was fought. He looked upon the War as a ghastly calamity or a more ghastly crime. They might talk about their idealism but it wasn’t convincing. There wasn’t the élan, the conviction, the burning idealism which carried the ragged untrained armies of the First French Republic so dramatically to Victory over the hostile coalitions of the Kings. There was always the suspicion of dupery and humbug. Therefore, he could not take part in the War with any enthusiasm or conviction. On the other hand, he saw the intolerable egotism of setting up oneself as a notable exception or courting a facile martyrdom of _rouspetance_. Going meant one more little brand in the conflagration; staying out meant that some other, probably physically weaker brand, was substituted. His conscience was troubled before he was in the army, and equally troubled afterwards. The only consolation he felt was in the fact that you certainly had a worse and a more dangerous time in the line than out of it. As a matter of fact, I never really “got” George’s position. He hated talking about the subject, and he had thought about it and worried about it so much that he was quite muddle-headed. It seemed to involve the whole universe, and his attempts to express his point of view would wander off into discussions about the Greek city-states or the principles of Machiavelli. He was frankly incoherent, which meant a considerable inner conflict. From the very beginning of the War he had got into the habit of worrying, and this developed with alarming rapidity. He worried about the War, about his own attitude to it, about his relations with Elizabeth and Fanny, about his military duties, about everything. Now “worry” is not “caused” by an event; it is a state which seizes upon any event to “worry” over. It is a form of neurasthenia, which may be induced in a perfectly healthy mind by shock and strain. And for months and months he just worried and drifted.