Out of the many things that have come to me in the past six months I am particularly glad of little Tinker’s friendship—P.’. baby. She’s not two yet, but we were real pals. She would never go to sleep until I had kissed her in her cot “Good-night.” First thing in the morning she would be beside my bed, tugging at the clothes and ordering me to “Det up.” Since I’ve been gone they’ve had to ring the bell and pretend that I’m just entering the hall, so that they may make her go to sleep contented. When they ask her, “Where’s Con?” she reaches up to the window and points. “Dorn walk in park,” she says. They talk about the love of a woman keeping a man straight, but I don’t think it’s to be compared with the love of a little child. You can’t lie to them. The sharp rat-a-tat of the machine guns has started; but the mist is too thick for me to see what is happening——It’s nothing; it’s died down. In an hour I shall be relieved, and shall return to the guns and post this letter. It will reach you when? Sometime in June, I expect, when the summer is really come and you’re wearing your cool dresses. I can see you going out in the early morning to do your shopping. XLIV France May 7, 1918 I am sitting in my bed—my sleeping-sack, I mean—which is spread out on the red-tiled floor of a funny little cottage. There isn’t much of the floor left, as four of the other officers are sharing the room with me. Coming in through the window is the smell of sweet myrtle, old-fashioned and quiet; from far away drifts in the continual pounding of the guns and, strangely muddled up with the gunfire, the multitudinous croaking of frogs. I’m having an extraordinary May month of it in lovely country, marching through the showers, getting drenched and drying when the sun deigns to make an appearance. After being off a horse for so long, I’m in the saddle for many hours every day. I am glad that you all feel the way you do about my returning to the Front. I was sure you wouldn’t want me to be out of these great happenings. My fear, when I was in England this spring, was the same as I had when I first joined—that fighting would all-be ended before I got into the line. No fear of that; I think we’re in for another two years of it. There’s hot work ahead—the hottest of the entire war. Oddly enough my spirits rise as the struggle promises to grow fiercer. I don’t know why, unless it is that as the action quickens one has a chance of giving more. There’s nothing sad about being wounded or dying for one’s country. In this war one does so much more than that—he dies for the whole of humanity.