From that moment I became a conscientious objector, a pacifist, a most bitter hater of the Boche whose hand it was that had wrenched the lid off the European cesspit. Illogical? If you like, but what is logic? Logically the war was justified. We crucified Christ logically and would do so again. From that moment my mind turned and twisted like a compass needle that had lost its sense of the north. The days were an endless burden blackened by the shadow of death, filled with emptiness, bitterness and despair. The day’s work went on as if nothing had happened. A new face took his place at the mess table, the routine was exactly the same. Only a rough wooden cross showed that he had ever been with us. And all the time we went on shooting, killing just as good fellows as he, perhaps, doing our best to do so at least. Was it honest, thinking as I did? Is it honest for a convict who doesn’t believe in prisons to go on serving his time? There was nothing to be done but go on shooting and try and forget. But war isn’t like that. It doesn’t let you forget. It gives you a few days, or weeks, and then takes some one else. “Old Thing” was the next, in the middle of a shoot in a front line O.P. I was lying on my bed playing with a tiny kitten while the third subaltern at the ’phone passed on the corrections to the battery. Suddenly, instead of saying “Five minutes more right,” he said, “_What’s_ that?--Badly wounded?” and the line went. I was on the ’phone in a flash, calling up battalion for stretcher bearers and doctors. They brought me his small change and pencil-ends and pocketbook,--and the kitten came climbing up my leg. The Major came back from leave--which he had got on the Colonel’s return--in time to attend Old Thing’s funeral with the Colonel and myself. Outside the cemetery a football match was going on all the time. They didn’t stop their game. Why should they? They were too used to funerals,--and it might be their turn in a day or two. Thanks to the Major my leave came through within a week. It was like the answer to a prayer. At any price I wanted to get away from the responsibility, away from the sight of khaki, away from everything to do with war. London was too full of it, of immaculate men and filmy girls who giggled. I couldn’t face that. I went straight down to the little house among the beeches and pines,--an uneasy guest of long silences, staring into the fire, of bursts of violent argument, of rebellion against all existing institutions.