Did you see the good news concerning R. B.? He’s got his V.C. for saving life under shell-fire in Zeebrugge harbour. His M.L. was hit fifty times. I remember the way his neighbours used to patronize him before the war. They all laughed when he went to California to study for an aeroplane pilot. They didn’t try to join themselves, but his keenness struck them as funny. What could a man who was half-blind do at the war, they asked—a man who ran his launch into logs on the lake, and who crashed in full daylight when approaching a wharf? When he had been awarded his flying certificate at the American Air School our R.F.C. refused to take him. He tried to get into the infantry, into everything, anything, and was universally turned down on the score of weak sight. His quixotic keenness made less keen spectators smile. Then, by a careless chance, he got himself accepted by the R.N.V.R. and was put on to a motor launch. Everyone pictured him as colliding with everything solid that came his way, and marvelled at the slipshod naval tests. But it wasn’t his eyesight and limitations that really counted—it was his keenness. In two years he’s a V.C., a D.S.O., and a Lieutenant-Commander. Before the war he was the kind of chap with whom girls danced out of kindness To-day he’s a hero. We were discussing him out here the other day; he’s the type of hero this war has produced—a man not strong physically, a man self-depreciating and shy, a man with grave limitations and very conscious of his difference from other men. This was his chance to approve himself. People laughed that he should offer himself as a fighter at all, but he elbowed his way through their laughter to self-conquest. That’s the grand side of war—its test of internals, of the heart and spirit of a man! bone and muscle and charm are only secondary. The big things one sees done out here—done in the way of duty—and so quietly! Whether one comes back or stays, the test has made all the personal suffering worth while—for one hour of living to know that you have played the man and saved a fellow-creature’s life. One never knows when these chances will come; they rush in on you unexpectedly and expect to find you ready. In the encounter the character built up in a lifetime is examined and reported on by the momentary result. And yet how one suffers for the suffering he witnesses—the suffering of horses and Huns, as well as of the men on our own side. The silent, smashed forms carried past on the stretchers; the little groups of busy men among whom a shell bursts, leaving those who do not rise. And overhead the sky is blue and the wind blows happily through the sunshine. “Gone west”—that’s all, to the land of departing suns. Some of us will stay to sleep among the gentlemen of France. In either event we are fortunate in having been given the privilege to serve our kind. LXXVI Prince of Wales Hospital, London, September 6, 1918