I made friends with the French Benedictine Fathers who lived near by; they had been driven from Solesmes in France by the anti-clerical laws of 1906, and had built themselves a new abbey at Quarr. The abbey had a special commission from the Vatican to collect and edit ancient church music. Hearing the fathers at their plain-song made us for the moment forget the war completely. Many of them were ex-army officers who had, I was told, turned to religion after the ardours of their campaigns or after disappointments in love. They were greatly interested in the war, which they saw as a dispensation of God for restoring France to Catholicism. They told me that the freemason element in the French army had been discredited and that the present Supreme Command was predominantly Catholic—an augury, they said, of Allied victory. The guest-master showed me the library of twenty thousand volumes, hundreds of them blackletter. The librarian was an old monk from Béthune and was interested to hear from me an accurate account of the damage to his quarter of the town. The guest-master asked me whether there were any books that I would like to read in the library. He said that there were all kinds there—history, botany, music, architecture, engineering, almost every other lay subject. I asked him whether there was a poetry section. He smiled kindly and said, no, poetry was not regarded as improving. The Father Superior asked me whether I was a _bon catholique_. I replied no, I did not belong to the true religion. To spare him a confession of agnosticism I added that my parents were Protestants. He said: ‘But if ours is the true religion why do you not become a Catholic?’ He asked the question in such a simple way that I felt ashamed. But I had to put him off somehow, so I said: ‘Reverend father, we have a proverb in England never to swap horses while crossing a stream. I am still in the war, you know.’ I offered: ‘Peut-être après la guerre.’ This was a joke with myself; it was the stock answer that the Pas de Calais girls were ordered by their priests to give to Allied soldiers who asked for a ‘Promenade, mademoiselle?’ It was seldom given, I was told, except for the purpose of bargaining. All the same, I half-envied the Fathers their abbey on the hill, finished with wars and love affairs. I liked their kindness and seriousness; the clean whitewashed cells and the meals eaten in silence at the long oaken tables, while a novice read the _Lives of the Saints_; the food, mostly cereals, vegetables and fruit, was the best I had tasted for years—I was tired of ration beef, ration jam, ration bread and cheese. At Quarr, Catholicism ceased to be repulsive to me.