Speaking of Poetry, I have read with exquisite relish, several times, the copy of the Bulletin you sent me. And always I stop reading--prevented from continuing by irresistible mirth. God help us! Let all the world, especially all of it that deals in thought, beat its breast and repeat after me “God help us.” Here are young men battling in a strange land to win back for the people of that land their decent homes. Here are French peasants (old men, children and women) kneeling at mass in a church with a yawning shell hole through the tower. Among them are American soldiers. And other American soldiers (God rest their brave young souls) rest in new graves by a fair road I know. We hear the crash of shells, the tattoo of machine guns, we see unearthly lights staining the black sky. And--Oh, God help us! Send me more bulletins! I want to read more about Mr. ---- whose “mystic” (of course!) poems, seem to ... “to challenge comparison with the works of Tagore.” I want to read more about ... chaunting to crowds of old ladies who stink of perfume and cold cream and gasoline, while a young female shakes her shanks and “gives a visual embodiment of the poet’s idea.” I want to read about A ... “What a privilege to be at once a poet and a fairy godmother!” And I want to read about W ... going West and--just being himself! God forgive me for being a Pharisee, and keep me from judging others! But I do love to read about these things and then go across the street and drink a large drink with Joe Brady, meanwhile singing a coarse ballad entitled “The Old Gray Mare.” We’re going to be paid to-morrow, I’m glad to say, so I’ll be able to have a few meals indoors. This roadside picnic stuff is all right in fair weather, but French weather is not always what it should be. I hope your allotment is arriving, but I doubt it. I think we’ll collect it in our old age. I read recently that a Civil War Veteran had just succeeded in collecting some pay due him in 1862--perhaps we’ll be as lucky. We’ll buy a carton of cigarettes for Christopher’s youngest son with the first payment. Your poem “Experience” has lodgment in my brain and heart and soul. “She walks the way primroses go.” Simple--isn’t it? that line--to make it nothing much was required--genius merely. Thank God there’s you in a world of ----s and ----s. Do you mind being considered the “one just man”? Figuratively I kiss your hand--it was absurd of me to preach to you who are my mistress in the art of devotion as in the art of poetry. JOYCE. * * * * * April 27th, 1918. Dear Aline: