And yet within the hour all these people had been chucking bombs at one another. A few days ago I was detailed for a novel experience—to follow up the infantry attack across No Man’s Land to the Hun Front line and as far as his support trenches. I called for volunteers to accompany me and had a splendid lot of chaps. My party got away with the adventure without a scratch—which was extraordinarily lucky. Moreover, we accomplished the particular job that we were called upon to do. To-night I’m out from dusk to daylight poking through the darkness in a country where one dare not use a flash-light. Between two ruined towns I have to pass a battered Calvary. The Christ upon His Cross is still untouched, though the shrine and surrounding trees are smashed to atoms. I think He means more to me like that—stripped of His gorgeousness—than ever. He seems so like ourselves in His lonely and unhallowed suffering. The road which leads to and from Him is symbolic—shell-torn, scattered with dead horses and men, while ahead the snarl of shrapnel darts across the sky and spends itself in little fleecy puffs. All this desolation will be re-created one day, the country will grow green and, in another country, greener than any upon earth, those dead men will walk and laugh—and in that other country the Christ will no longer hang alone and aloofly. I like to think of that—of the beauty in the future, if not in this, then in some other world. One grows tired, just like that image on the Cross. How little the body counts! War teaches us that. IV France April 22, 1917 I had a letter from each one of you the day before last, and they reached me within three weeks of being written—it made you all seem very near. I am writing this to you from a mercifully deep dug-out, which was the home of Huns considerably less than a fortnight ago. I’m sure it was very obliging of them to think ahead and provide us with such safe hiding-places from their villainous shells. They have knocked the house down overhead. In the yard is a broken bird-cage—the owner must have set the captive free before he made good his own escape. Hanging at the head of my bunk is an iron crucifix and on the wall is a beautiful woman’s portrait. One hardly thinks of his enemy as being human these days—he seems only an impersonal devastating force; but it was a man with affections who lately tenanted my dug-out.