This was the time of the first Spanish influenza epidemic and Nancy’s mother caught it, but she did not want to miss Tony when he came on leave. She wanted to go to theatres with him in London; they were devoted to each other. So when the doctor came she reduced her temperature with aspirin and pretended that she was all right. But she knew that the ghosts in the mirrors knew. She died in London on July 13th, a few days later. While she was dying her chief feeling was one of pleasure that Tony had got his leave prolonged on her account. (Tony was killed two months later.) Nancy’s mother was a far more important person to her than I was, and I was alarmed of the effect that the shock of her death might have on the baby. A week later I heard that on the day that she had died Siegfried had been shot through the head while making a daylight patrol through long grass in No Man’s Land. And he wrote me a verse letter which I cannot quote, though I should like to do so. It is the most terrible of his war-poems. And I went on mechanically at my cadet-battalion work. The candidates for commissions we got were no longer gentlemen in the regimental sense—mostly Manchester cotton clerks and Liverpool shipping clerks—but they were all experienced men from France and were quiet and well behaved. We failed about one in three. And the war went on and on. I was then writing a book of poems called _Country Sentiment_. Instead of children as a way of forgetting the war, I used Nancy. _Country Sentiment_, dedicated to her, was a collection of romantic poems and ballads. At the end was a group of pacifist war-poems. It contained one about the French civilians—I cannot think how I came to put so many lies in it—I even said that old Adelphine Heu of Annezin gave me a painted china plate, and that her pride was hurt when I offered to pay her. The truth is that I bought the plate from her for about fifteen shillings and that I never got it from her. Adelphine’s daughter-in-law would not allow her to give it up, claiming it as her own, and I never got my money back from Adelphine. This is only one of many of my early poems that contain falsities for public delectation. In November came the Armistice. I heard at the same time news of the death of Frank Jones-Bateman, who had gone back again just before the end, and of Wilfred Owen, who often used to write to me from France, sending me his poems. Armistice-night hysteria did not touch the camp much, though some of the Canadians stationed there went down to Rhyl to celebrate in true overseas style. The news sent me out walking alone along the dyke above the marshes of Rhuddlan (an ancient battle-field, the Flodden of Wales) cursing and sobbing and thinking of the dead. XXVI