I have just been reading a letter from a nurse out in Palestine describing the little wooden crosses above fallen British soldiers which now star the Mount of Olives. The poetry of the ordinary crops out everywhere to-day; we are living on higher levels than we realize. For hundreds of years the future generations will weave legends round us, making us appear titanic spirit-people, just as we have clothed with almost unearthly splendour the Crusaders of the Dark Ages. This is a pleasant May evening. The fields are golden with buttercups. Above the singing of the birds I can hear a low droning as of bees among flowers; but the droning is of homing aeroplanes. This is the kind of weather and country in which it would not be unbeautiful to die. When I went down this morning to the barn in which my section is stationed, I found notice printed on the door, on either side a British and American flag-and underneath a luridly illustrated Sunday magazine selection of extracts from The Glory of the Trenches. A small world, isn’t it? I have been reading a book lately that would interest you; it’s by Ford Madox Hueffer and is called On Heaven. It consists of a number of poems written while on active service. He’s managed to put down in a rough and tumble of words a good many of our hungers and adorations. I hadn’t realized before I read him how very much of the conversation of our soldiers is an exchange of confidences about the women they love or have loved. I believe every man at the Front has a hope of the girl he will be true to some day, and a fear lest—— One of Hueffer’s poems on the subject is very beautiful. It starts this way: “In Chepstow stands a castle; My love and I went there; The foxgloves on the wall all heard Her footsteps on the stair. The sun was high in heaven And the perfume in the air Came from purple cat’s valerian— But her footsteps on the stair Made a sound like silver music Thro’ the perfume in the air.” The last verse sums up the dread of many a fighting-man—that all his dreams are only dreams, and that a return to reality may disappoint him: “And another soldier fellow Shall come courting of my dear. And it’s I shall not be with her With my lip beside her ear. For it’s he shall walk beside her In the perfume of the air To the silver, silver music Of her footstep on the stair.”