Remembering this, it is easy to understand the consternation in Mrs. Teddy’s mind when, after the War had been running a year, Teddy announced that he was going to enlist. He was firm about it too. He had thought the whole thing out—house to be shut up, she to go stay with her mother, his separation allowance so much, and so much more in the bank to draw on, and so on. Her remonstrances he met so promptly that one can only suppose them anticipated. His health? Never had a day’s sickness, as she knew. His business prospects? The country’s prospects were more important, and his Country Wanted Him. His “horror of blood”? Teddy twisted uneasily. “I’ve a horror of the whole beastly business,” he said—“of war and guns and shooting, of being killed, and ... of leaving you.” This was diplomacy of the highest, and the resulting interlude gently slid into an acceptance of the fact of his going. He went, and—to get along with the War—at last came to France, and with his battalion into the trenches. He had not risen above the rank of private, partly because he lacked any ambition to command, and in larger part because his superiors did not detect any ability in him to handle the rather rough-and-ready crowd who were in his lot. Far from army training and rations doing him physical harm, he throve on them, and even put on flesh. But because he was really a good sort, was always willing to lend any cash he had, take a fatigue for a friend, joke over hardships and laugh at discomforts, he was on excellent terms with his fellows. He shed a good many, if not all, of his suburban peace ways, was a fairly good shot on the ranges, and even acquired considerable skill and agility at bayonet practice. But he never quite shed his “horror of blood.” Even after he had been in action a time or two and had fired many rounds from his rifle, he had a vague hope each time he pulled trigger that his bullet might not kill a man, might at most only wound him enough to put him out of action. The first shell casualty he saw in their own ranks made him literally and actually sick, and even after he had seen many more casualties than he cared to think about he still retained a squeamish feeling at sight of them. And in his battalion’s share of The Push, where there was a good deal of close-quarter work and play with bombs and bayonet, he never had urgent need to use his bayonet, and when a party of Germans in a dug-out refused to surrender, and persisted instead in firing up the steps at anyone who showed at the top, Teddy stood aside and left the others to do the bombing-out. It was ridiculous, of course, that a fighting man who was there for the express purpose of killing should feel any qualms about doing it, but there it was.