Probably what most men fear is not death but the pain and illness which generally precede death; and apart from that very natural dread there is the dread of leaving things which are dear to every one. After all, life is sweet to most of us; it is pleasant to feel the warm sun and see the blue sky and watch the shadows race over far hills; an occasional concert, a week-end spent at golf, or at working diligently in the garden; congenial employment, or a worthy book to read, all help to make life worth living, and the mind becomes sad at the thought of leaving these things and the home which they epitomize. I remember once in a troopship, a few days out from an Australian port, when the men had all got over their sea-sickness and were beginning to realize that they really were started on their Great Adventure, that I went down into their quarters at night, and found a big young countryman who had enlisted in the Artillery, sobbing bitterly. It was a long time before kindly consolation and a dose of bromide sent him off to sleep. In the morning he came to see me and tried to apologize for his unmanliness. “I’m not afraid of dyin’, sir,” he explained. “I want to stoush some of them Germans first, though. It’s leaving all me life in Australia if I ’appen to stop a lump of lead, sir--that’s what’s worryin’ me.” Life in Australia meant riding on horseback when he was not following at the plough’s tail. It was the only life he knew, and he loved it. But I was fully convinced that he no more feared actual death than he feared a mosquito, and when he left the ship at Suez, and joined lustily in the singing of “Australia will be there”--who so jovial as he? He got through the fighting on Gallipoli, only to be destroyed on the Somme; his horse, if it had not already been sent to Palestine, had to submit to another rider; his acres to produce for another ploughman. The last illness is, of course, sometimes very unpleasant, especially if cancer or angina pectoris enter into the picture, but I have often marvelled at the endurance of men who should, according to all one’s preconceived ideas, be broken up with distress. Not uncommonly a man refuses to believe that he is really so seriously ill as other people think, and there is always the hope eternal in every breast that he will get better. Quite commonly he looks hopefully in the glass every morning as he shaves for signs of coming improvement; there are few men who really believe that sentence of early death has been passed upon them.