The whole hope and talk of our chaps is the Americans—what they’re going to do, when they’re going to start doing it, and what kind of a moral they will have. I hear the wildest rumours of the numbers they have in France—rumours which I know to be untrue since my tour along the American lines. You will have read the manuscript of Out to Win long before this letter reaches you. I wonder what you all think of it and whether you like it. It was written in a breathless, racing sort of fashion. I sat at it from morning till last thing at night. All my desire was to do my duty as regards the Americans and then to get out here before the big show started. I managed things just in time. I don’t remember much of what I wrote—only a picture of Domremy and another of Evian and Nancy. I hope it was as good as you expected. There are things one lives through and sees now which seem ordinary but which to future ages will figure as stupendous. If one can record them now in just that spirit of ordinariness which constitutes their real wonder, they will together give an accurate portrait of Armageddon. My nine months out of the line began to give me a little perspective—I began to see the awful marvellousness of some of the scenes that I had lived through. Now, like the mist which I see hanging above the Hun Front line, a curtain of normality is blotting out the sharp abnormal edges of my landscape. This war, at the distance which removes you from it, must seem a filthy and brutal kind of game. It is all of that. But it’s more than that. The game was not of our inventing—it was thrust on us. We are not responsible for the game; but we are responsible for the spirit in which we play it. The fine, clear, visionary attitude of our chaps redeems for us the horror and pathos of the undertaking. It will be towards the end of May when this arrives and you’ll be off to the lakes and the mountains. I wonder where. I suppose we’ll still be plugging along, sending death over into Fritz’s lines and receiving it back. XLII France May 2, 1918 Here I am up forward again on my shift. I’m sitting in a hole sunk beneath the level of the ground, with a slit that just peeps out across the dandelions to the Hun Front line. From here I can catch any movement in the enemy back-country without being seen myself. Below my O.P. there is a deep dug-out to which I can retire in the event of enemy shelling; if one exit gets blown in, there’s a second from which I can make good my escape. On each fresh trip to this place I find a new gem of literature left behind by one or other of the telephonists. Last time it was a priceless kitchen masterpiece by Charles Garvice, entitled The Triumphant Lover; this time it’s an exceedingly purple effort by Victoria Cross, entitled Five Nights. So you see I do not allow my interest in matters intellectual to rust.