The boys at the Front know of the anxiety and suspense that darken their homes, and they do all they can to lighten them. There were times on the Somme when the men were utterly exhausted with fighting and long vigils in the trenches. Water was scarce, and a mild dysentery came into evidence. No fire could be lighted to cook food or make hot tea. The ranks had been thinned, and only two officers were left to each company. The weather was bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. Any moment word might come for another attack. The campaign was near its close, and the work must be completed despite the prevalent exhaustion. The officers were too tired, depressed and preoccupied to censor hundreds of letters. In front of him each could see a gaping grave. The sun was rapidly "going west" and leaving them to the cold and dark. Nothing seemed to matter in comparison with _that_. To hold services were impossible and I felt that the best I could do was to walk through the trench, chat with the officers and men, gather up the men’s letters and take them back and censor in my tent. This gave the officers times to write their own, and an opportunity to post them. But note, I pray you, the nobility of these gallant fellows. All of them were exhausted and depressed. The shadows of death were thick about them, yet when I opened their letters, I found myself--with two exceptions out of three or four hundred--in an entirely different atmosphere. It was a sunny atmosphere in which birds were singing. The men said nothing of their suffering, their depression, their fears for the future. The black wings of death cast no shadow over their pages. They said they were "all right," "merry and bright" and "soon going back for a long rest." They told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to send, and gave them details how to make up the next parcel. They talked as if death were out of sight--a sinister fellow with whom they had nothing to do. The officers, of course, censor their own letters, so I did not see how they wrote. But I know. They wrote as the men wrote, and probably with a still lighter touch. Their homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet not by any word of theirs would the shadows be deepened. They could not shield themselves from war’s horrors but they would do their best to shield their white swans at home. They could not keep their women folk out of the war, but they would deliver them from its worst horrors. Not till they had fallen would they let the shafts pass them to their mothers and wives; rather would they gather them in their own breasts. In the hour of the world’s supreme tragedy there was a woman standing by the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dying breath, bade His closest friend take her, when the last beam faded, to his own home and be in His place, a son to her. I know no scene that better represents the feelings of our soldiers towards their loved ones at home.