Yesterday, to my great surprise, I was called up by the High Commissioner of Canada, and on going to see him found he wanted me to start at once on preparing an important government statement. Since I’m forbidden to use my arm for writing, I’m to have a stenographer and dictate my stuff after doing the interviewing. This job is only temporary. And I think it is possible after I have finished it, if they refuse to allow me to return to the Front at once, that I may get a leave to America. I wouldn’t want to get a long one, as I am so anxious to get back to France. Don’t worry at all about me. I feel quite well now, and go about with my arm in a sling and am allowed out of hospital to do this work all day. As soon as my ann grows stronger I’ll write you a good long letter, but while it is as it is at present I have to restrict myself to bare essentials. Oh, did I tell you? I wouldn’t have missed coming through London on a stretcher for pounds. The flower-girls climbed into the ambulance and showered us with roses. All the way as we passed people waved and shouted. It was a kind of royal procession, and, like a baby, I cried. XIII London August 3,1917 I’ve just come back to my office in Oxford Circus from lunching at the Rendezvous. Next to my table during lunch were two typical Wardour Street dealers, rubbing their hands and chortling over a cheap buy. I wonder how long this different way of life is going to last. Someone will snap his fingers and heigh-ho, presto! I shall be back in France. This little taste of the old life gives me a very vivid idea of the sheer glee with which I shall greet the end of the war. How jolly comfortable it will be to be your own master—not that one ever is his own master while there are other people to live for. But I mean, what an extraordinary miracle it will seem to be allowed to reckon one’s life in years and not in weeks—to be able to look forward and plan and build. And yet—this is a confession—I can see myself getting up from my easy-chair and going out again quite gladly directly there is another war, if my help is needed. There was a time, long ago, when I used to regard a soldier with horror, and wondered how decent folk could admire him; the red of his coat always seemed to me the blood-red of murder. But it isn’t the killing that counts—you find that out when you’ve become a soldier; it’s the power to endure and walk bravely, and the opportunity for dying in a noble way. One doesn’t hate his enemy if he’s a good soldier, and doesn’t even want to kill him from any personal motive—he may even regret killing him while in the act. I think it’s just this attitude that makes our Canadians so terrible—they kill from principle and not from malice. I’m seeing all my old friends again, lunching with one and dining with another, and have been to some matinees. But I can go to no evening performances, because I have to be in the hospital at 10 p.m.