We are not going back to quite the same part of the line, but near it. It will be new country to me altogether, and to everyone else concerned. Poor Swallow, poor Jezebel, poor Tank, I'd give anything to shelter you three; but, alas! I fear you are going to have a nasty time of it now. All clipped, too. It's Swallow particularly that I tremble for. He does so throw up the sponge. Tank copies Bird in everything, so she ought to pull through all right. _December 1._ [Sidenote: AMIENS CATHEDRAL] All leave is cancelled again, at any rate in this army--possibly on account of the move, possibly on account of nasty fish in the sea. However, the telegram says "until further notice," which usually means for a short time only. Not that it affects me, but it's bad luck on some of the men who were just off. Now about Xmas. I have got a new crop, thank you ever so much, that I bought at a town near here. A beautiful cathedral town. With doors all padded up with sand-bags, the great cathedral towers above the town, and is seen for miles and miles. A good effort. What fun they must have had building it. What they believed then they expressed in outward and visible form. What we think now is (or ought to be) very different indeed from what they thought then. But I can't remember having ever seen anything that _begins_ to express what we think (or ought to think) now. Everyone in the Church of England now seems to me to think _almost exactly_ what was thought when this cathedral was built! If this war achieves nothing else, I pray with all my mind, and all my soul, and all my strength, that all the sects and all the churches may suddenly feel tired of all the 1001 little methods of procedure, and say: "Damn it all! what does all this ancient paraphernalia mean to us? Is God quite so complicated and involved as we have supposed? Everything else in the world progresses. Thought progresses. Let us take a deep breath, and realize that religion ought to be more 'into the future' than even Zeppelins or Tanks, please." [Illustration: EXPLOSION OF AN AMUNITION DUMP The smoke from a large explosion usually assumes a queer tree-like form and disperses slowly.] _December 2._ Just been superintending the burying of some horses. A curious job. You have to disembowel them first. Quite ghoulish. And then head and legs are cut off, and the whole is buried in a hole 12 feet deep. Up there they often lie about for some time, and get as smelly as dead human beings. Back here it all has to be done prestissimo. The strange thing is that, whereas before the war I should have felt sick and possibly dreamt about it, now it seems merely more boring than most other things of the kind. Up there Tommies and Honourables eat their lunch of sandwiches with lots and lots of dead people in varying stages of decomposition all round. An odour more hideous than anything you have ever imagined. But you get used to it. [Sidenote: TALKING ABOUT HOME]