THE rest of the battery caught us up this morning in our copse which we tenant with the dead. We are resting to-day, holding the line in depth, while the troops who were behind us yesterday, have passed through us and beyond. Far out in the blue we can catch the rapid thud of their drum-fire. With them it is, as it was with us yesterday, thirst, heroism, cruelty, magnanimity mingling in an ecstatic trance, while the August woods drip scarlet with men’s triumphant carelessness of dying. From here the orchestra of murder has passed, leaving as record of its passage the brief putrescence of the earthly part of sacrifice guarded by the shadowy sunlit silence. Is it worth it? What does it all mean, this furious display of homicidal passion? It’s easy for the armchair crusaders who sit at home to prate about the glory of war. One glimpse at the landscape on which I gaze would bruise their lips with reality and wash the mountebank valour with tears from their eyes. We who have seen war for what it is, will always speak of it as the filthiest of jobs, fit only for human orang-outangs or maniacs. A woman risks her life that a man may be born. It takes twenty-five long years of love to build his mind and spirit into manliness. What glory can there be in tearing the carefully planned strength of nations barbarously limb from limb in a second? This war may have been unavoidable, but our political and journalistic prophets have no right to dress it up to appear what it is not—war is an unclean orgy of jungle-cannibals revelling in the obscenity of entrails and blood. Half the time it is not even brave; there is nothing brave in smothering a front-line with shells which are fired from miles behind the danger; there is nothing brave in overwhelming a demoralized enemy by sheer weight of numbers. Yesterday we slaughtered men like vermin and with as little thought. We were urged on by an impelling rage, which made us almost divine in our destroying eloquence. What we did was right; the feeling I have to-day is only the reaction of disgust. That I should be able to feel disgust and yet go on fighting, proves more than anything else the righteousness of our cause.