I’m going back for the second time, and going back in the most placid frame of mind. I compare this trip with my first trip over as a soldier. I was awfully anxious then, and kept saying good-bye to things for the last time. Now I live day by day in a manner which is so take-it-for-granted as to be almost commonplace. I’ve locked my imagination away in some garret of my mind and the house of my thoughts is very quiet. What bricks you all were in the parting—there wasn’t any whining—you were a real soldier’s family, and I felt proud of you. It was just a kind of “Good luck, old chap”—with all the rest of the speaking left to the eyes and hands. That’s the way it should be in a world that’s so full of surprises. This trip has done a tremendous lot for me—I shall always know now that the trenches are not the whole of the horizon. Before, when I landed in France, it seemed as though a sound-and sight-proof curtain had dropped behind and everything I had known and loved was at an end. One collects a little bit of shrapnel and, heigho, presto! one’s home again. On my second trip, the war won’t seem such a world without end. To-night I have to pack—that’s wonderful, too. I’m wondering whether Reggie will be on the station. I shall send a telegram to warn him. XVI The Ritz Hotel, London November 11, 1917 This was the date at which I had to report back at Headquarters. Actually I reported back yesterday, because to-day is Sunday. I found that I had been detailed not for France, but for work under the High Commissioner. You know what such news means to me. I at once did my best to fight the order, but was told that it was a military order in which I had no choice. I start work to-morrow at Oxford Circus House, but shall put in an urgent request to go to France.-I shall at least try to get some limitations to the period of my stay in England. Even when I was in hospital I used to feel that the last stretcher-case out of the fighting was someone to be worshipped—he was nearer to the sacrifice than I. And now I’m not to go back for months, perhaps—I shall eat my heart out in England. Reggie fell asleep and has just wakened. He was dreaming, he said, the best dream in the world. It was that he might land back in New York on 20th December and spend Christmas with you—then go up to Kootenay to get a glimpse of his little green home among the snow and apple trees and—— “And then what?” I asked. He made a wry face. “Go back to hunting submarines,” he said quickly. Go back! We all want to go back. Why? Because it’s so easy to find reasons for not going back probably. I shall raise heaven and earth to be sent back—and you’ll be glad of it.