Our major was twice wounded in the recent offensives and has now left us for a higher position. I was terribly sorry to lose him. V France April 30,1917 The mud has gone. Spring is here and the sun shines all the time. Oh, a most enjoyable war, I do assure you. When I wakened this morning I wandered up the thirty stairs from my dug-out into the former garden, which is now a scene of the utmost desolation. A row was going on as though the Celestial housemaid had lost her temper and given notice, and was tumbling all the plates from the pantry through the clouds. Above the clatter I heard a sound which was almost alarming: the clear, brave note of a thrush, piping, piping, piping. He didn’t seem to care a rap how often the guns blew their noses or how often the Hun shrapnel clashed like cymbals overhead; he had his song to sing in the sunshine, and was determined to sing it, no matter that the song might go unheard. So there I stood and listened to him among the ruins, as one might listen to a faithful priest in a fallen church. I re-created in imagination the people who had lived here for generations, their tragedies, kindnesses, love-affairs. It must have been a beautiful place once, for everywhere there are stumps of fruit-trees, hedges of box trodden almost underground, circular patches which were flower-beds. I can picture the exiles’ joy when they hear that their village has been recaptured. Presently they’ll come back, these old women and men—for their sons are fighting—and they’ll look in vain for even the landmarks of the little house which once sheltered their affections. The thrush in the tree is all that the Huns have left of past history. We British lose our men in the fight, but the sacrifice of the French is immeasurable, for when their sons are dead they have no quiet place of recollections. They can’t say, “Do you remember how he walked here two years back?” or “These hollyhocks he planted,” or “How he waved us goodbye as we watched him from the gate!” The same cyclone of passion which has taken their sons’ fives, has robbed them of everything tangible which would remind them of him. As regards the U.S.A. joining with us, I have spoken with several Huns. They one and all seem very dejected about it, and seem to consider the loss of America’s friendship one of the greatest blows of the war. VI France May 10, 1917