One perhaps learns most by unlearning. I used to think of the spirit of pain as intensely, even immensely, vocal. I remember, especially, when I was young, a great gully in the north, beside the sea, up which the waves came dashing in perpetually recurrent warfare, the flood seeking ever higher, only to be drawn away down the sloping shingle again, shrieking, to the main. Often in the daytime I would listen, and, in the dark, would linger near, held by the awe of the unsleeping tragedy of that vast elemental grief which sways about the edges of the world. I told my heart, "This is the spirit of the world pain finding voice." But now I know otherwise. I have learned better in the school of suffering, in the land of war. The spirit of pain is silent--tholing, at its deepest. It looks at you out of those suffering eyes. There is no cry in it. For the mystery of duty is within its depths. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is its truest picture. So it comes to be that the nobility and manliness of the brave combine, with unforgettable splendour of ineffable beauty, the darkness of our times. When they do speak there is a majesty of stillness about their utterance, vast as the mid-deep, far away, out under the stars. The lads are uplifted by the nearness of the Unseen. I have before me two genuine documents, letters of two fine boys who went godward up the highway of the sun--the way of sacrifice. They speak for themselves. No novelist's imagination could create so fine an utterance. One was scribbled in the trenches, the other in the hospital ward, to those who had the best claim on the best the writers had to give. Said one: "I am in the trenches, and in half an hour we go over the top. Our artillery is going at it hammer and tongs, the biggest bombardment in English history. It is just like huge express trains rushing through the air in hundreds. All of us are happy in the prospect of a clean fight after so many weary months as passive spectators of anything but warfare, except on rare occasions. If I get through all right I shall add a postscript to this. If not, mother dear, I know you will not be beaten by a Spartan mother who had no heavenly Father revealed to her to look to for comfort, but yet could say, 'Come back with victory, or not at all.' With heaps of love. * * *" The other is suffused with the same straightforward spirit of fearlessness and faith. "I was so glad to see your answer this morning, but am sorry I have not enough strength to write much. A good few died of wounds in this hospital through weakness, but I am leaving all doubts with God, as He holds the key of all the Unknown, and I am glad. So if I die before long, and I cannot see anything more sure, I hope to meet you all in God's good time. My wound is numb. It is in my thigh, and I have no pain. * * * I am now at the balance, to live or die. So good day, and God bless all. * * *"