That figure of Nobody in sodden khaki, cumbered with ugly gear, its precious rifle wrapped in rags, no brightness anywhere about it except the light of its eyes (did those eyes mock us, did they reproach us, when they looked into ours in Flanders?), its face seamed with lines which might have been dolorous, which might have been ironic, with the sweat running from under its steel casque, looms now in the memory, huge, statuesque, silent but questioning, like an overshadowing challenge, like a gigantic legendary form charged with tragedy and drama; and its eyes, seen in memory again, search us in privacy. Yet that figure was the "Cuthbert." It was derided by those onlookers who were not fit to kneel and touch its muddy boots. It broke the Hindenburg Line. Its body was thrown to fill the trenches it had won, and was the bridge across which our impatient guns drove in pursuit of the enemy. What is that figure now? An unspoken thought, which charges such names as Bullecourt, Cambrai, Bapaume, Croiselles, Hooge, and a hundred more, with the sound and premonition of a vision of midnight and all unutterable things. We see it in a desolation of the mind, a shape forlorn against the alien light of the setting of a day of dread, the ghost of what was fair, but was broken, and is lost. XVII. Bookworms JANUARY 18, 1919. In Fleet Street yesterday there was at lunch with us an American Army officer who discoursed heartily about a certain literary public-house. He quoted a long passage from Dickens showing how somebody took various turnings near Fetter Lane, easily to be recognized, till they arrived at this very tavern. Such enthusiasm is admirable, yet embarrassing. In return, I inquired after several young American poets, whose work, seldom seen here, interests me, and I named their books. He had never heard of them. This enthusiast did not even appear to have the beginning of an idea that his was unforgivable ignorance seeing that he knew more than a native ought to know about some of our taverns. Had he been an Englishman and a friend of mine I should have told him that I thought his love of letters was as spurious as the morality of the curate who speaks in a trembling baritone about changes in the divorce laws, but who accepts murder without altering the statutory smile of benediction.