JOYCE. * * * * * March 14, 1918. Dear Aline: I enclose some verses that you may like very much. That is, I think I enclose them--I have yet to consult with our Regimental censor as to whether or not I may send them. If the place name is cut out, put in its stead any French proper name that rhymes and do with the poem as you will. Perhaps the best thing to do with it will be to hand it to Bob for publishing. As to my book--why don’t worry about it--we all will live just as long and just as happily and probably be just as wealthy--or poor--if it is never written. I am cheerfully neglecting it, for many reasons. One is, of course, the censorship, which prevents the sending out of articles sufficiently topical and specific to be interesting. Another is a military regulation which forbids an officer or enlisted man from acting as a correspondent or writing for publication on a military subject. This will not, I suppose, prevent the publication of such of my verses and essays as are inspired by my experiences. But it will prevent my making for serial publication any consecutive record of events. What I will do will be to assemble, after the war is over, or after I have returned from it, such random essays or rhymes as I have made and bind them together with a thread of reminiscence--partly introspective, partly--what is the word? extraspective? external, at any rate. I shall write nothing that has any news value. I believe in my vanity that it will be a most charming book, not without its high lights of something more than charm. It really is the sort of book I’d like greatly to read, and I think that it will reach a public tired of the many war-narratives. And don’t think people won’t read it after the war is over! They will! The only sort of book I care to write about the war is the sort people will read after the war is over--a century after it is over! And that is the sort of book I am going to make. A _journal intime_, but as close to literature, as carefully thought and wrought as I can do. It will be episodic--chaotic, perhaps--no glib tale, no newspaper man’s work--but with God’s help, a work of art. So clamour not for copy! My enclosures of some weeks ago may have pleased you, but you’ll like this better.