It is almost funny in a village that is being shelled. Things simply disappear. You are standing in an archway a little back from the road--a shriek of shrapnel. The windows are broken and the tiles rush clattering into the street, while little bullets and bits of shell jump like red-hot devils from side to side of the street, ricochetting until their force is spent. Or a deeper bang, a crash, and a whole house tumbles down. _¾-hour later._--Curious life this. Just after I had finished the last sentence, I was called out to take a message to a battery telling them to shell a certain village. Here am I wandering out, taking orders for the complete destruction of a village and probably for the death of a couple of hundred men[10] without a thought, except that the roads are very greasy and that lunch time is near. Again, yesterday, I put our Heavies in action, and in a quarter of an hour a fine old church, with what appeared from the distance a magnificent tower, was nothing but a grotesque heap of ruins. The Germans were loopholing it for defence. Oh, the waste, the utter damnable waste of everything out here--men, horses, buildings, cars, everything. Those who talk about war being a salutary discipline are those who remain at home. In a modern war there is little room for picturesque gallantry or picture-book heroism. We are all either animals or machines, with little gained except our emotions dulled and brutalized and nightmare flashes of scenes that cannot be written about because they are unbelievable. I wonder what difference you will find in us when we come home---- IV--A NIGHT SCARE AT THE FRONT