I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and to-morrow I go forward again. It’s really great fun forward when it’s fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his intentions and plans. War’s the greatest game of the intellect yet invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength. It’s night now. I’m sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of “armed men falling downstairs,” to borrow Stevenson’s phrase. It’s really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings, He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser’s “Me und Gott.” My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won’t be ended until all the world is under arms. He’s an optimist. LXII France July 18, 1918 I’m up forward, sitting on a bank, looking at the Hun country through a hedge. I know you’d give anything to be with me. In front there’s a big curtain of sea-grey sky, against which planes crawl like flies. A beautiful half-moon looks down at me with the tragic face of Harlequin. Far away across a plain furrowed by shell-fire the spires and domes of cities in the captured territory shine. Like all forbidden lands, there are times when the Hun country looks exquisitely and unreally beautiful, as though it were tempting us to cross the line. I’ve just left off to watch a squadron of enemy planes which have been attempting to get across to our side. Everything has opened up on them; machine guns are spouting their luminous trails of tracer bullets; archies are bursting little cotton-wool clouds of death between them and their desire. They evidently belong to a circus, for they’re slipping and tumbling and looping like great gulls to whom the air is native. Ah, now they’ve given it up and are going home thwarted. I wonder what the poor old moon thinks of all these antics and turmoils in the domain which has been hers absolutely for so many æons of nights. The horrible and the beautiful blending in an ecstasy, that is what war is to-day. All one’s senses are unnaturally sharpened for the appreciation of both happiness and pain. You walk down a road where a shell fell a minute ago; the question always in your mind is, “Why wasn’t I there?” You shrug your shoulders and smile, “I may be there next time”—and bend all your energies towards being merry to-day. The threat of the end is very provocative of intensity.