for a month—so we jumped on our horses and trotted off to the nearest shower. It was five in the afternoon when we again took to the highway. We wanted to sponge out our minds by looking at something beautiful, just as we had sponged down our bodies. We, I should explain, were myself and the captain of my battery. Soon we found ourselves among fields from which all the wrinkles of trenches and pit-marks of shell-holes had been smoothed out. There was a river winding between tall trees unblasted by the curtain of fire. Peasants were at work on their little patches—women and either very old men or boys. We came to a town as quiet and unspoiled as those we used to visit in pre-war days. In a courtyard we tethered our horses and then sat down to one of those incomparable French meals. It was splendid after canned stuff, and you couldn’t hear the boom of a single gun. The peace of the place got hold of us—we didn’t want to go back too hurriedly, and kept postponing and postponing. A blue and gold haze with a touch of silver shining through it was blurring all the sky, when we remounted. We travelled slowly, singing—thinking up the twilight songs of other times. My thoughts went back to Scotch holidays at Arran and Loch Katrine—the daringly late evenings of childhood. Reluctantly we came back and saw the frantic city of Very lights grow up, which indicate the Hun front. The air began to be shaken again by the prolonged agony of rushing shells and stamping guns. It was only after midnight, when we had reached our hut, that I remembered the need of sleep. But when I struck a match on entering, I found letters from each one of you awaiting—so lay late in bed reading them by candlelight for another hour. One snatches at small pleasures and magnifies them into intensity. Your letters told me about Khaki Courage, and seeing “Colonel Newcome,” and about the Highlanders in New York. What a very much more homely place America must be to you now. I must say I am keen to see the book. It’s not mine at all—it’s you dear home people’s—you called it out and you put it together. Here I sit in the underground place which I have to call “home” at present. You go through all kinds of contortions to enter. Stephen Leacock could be very funny at my expense. VII France June 2, 1917 It is 11 a.m., and I’m sitting at the bottom of a dug-out waiting for the Hun to finish his morning hate before I go upstairs. He seems very angry, and has just caved in one of our walls. Mother seemed most awfully sorry for me in her last letter. But you know I’m really having rather a good time, despite having a minimum amount of washing and having our mess kitchen blown in every few days. The only time that one gets melancholy is when nothing is doing. An attack or the preparations for an attack are real fun. Everybody is on his toes, and there’s no time to think.