I appraise them mostly by the total effect of the impact of their souls on mine. I know their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts and feelings they inspire in me. "Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" There are certain thoughts and emotions that only come to me strongly when I am with the soldiers or when I am living again with them in memory, and so, I take these as their gift to me and judge the men by their influence on my character. Character is, in its influence, subtle as Spring. Words and actions by themselves are too coarse and conventional to do anything but mislead us in judging the quality of our men. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Not by their leaves. Fruit is _seed_. In the seed the tree reproduces itself. And reproduction, whether in physical, moral or spiritual life, is the test of vitality. I have not unduly loaded my pages with ghastly details of war, because their effect on the mind of the reader who has not been at the Front would be false and distorting. The reader would be more horrified in imagining them than our soldiers are in seeing them. I have tried rather to show life at the Front, with its mingling of red and gold, horror and happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his friends at home may see it as he sees it, and with his sense of proportion. If I could only do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would create a truer sympathy between the home and the trench. Some would find comfort for their hearts, and others would awake to a new and noble seriousness. Soldiers have suffered much through imperfect sympathies. They have been pitied for the wrong things, and left to freeze when they needed warmth. Only when we realize their dignity and greatness and the true nature of their experiences can we be their comrades and helpers. Life at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet our soldiers are neither brutalized nor terrorized, for there is something great and noble at the Front which keeps life pure and sweet and the men gentle and chivalrous. When "the boys" come home their friends will, in almost every case, find them just as bright, affectionate and good as when they went out. The only change will be a subtle one--a deepening in character and manly quality, a broadening in mind and creed, and an impatience with cant and make-believe whether in politics or business, Christianity or Rationalism. There will be an air of indefinable greatness about them as of men who have been at grips with the realities of life and death. In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward Teschemacher says that the gypsies, as they wander through the country, leave a sprinkling of grass or wild flowers at the cross-roads to indicate, to those who come after them, the road they have taken. These flowers are known as the "Patterain." These essays are my Patterain--wild flowers plucked in France, and left to mark the red path trod during the months I have been with my comrades at the Front.