war, one to whom the sight of suffering and bloodshed causes physical
pain, yet I forced myself to tread those awful fields of death and
agony, to look upon the ghastly aftermath of modern battle, that, if
it be possible, I might by my testimony in some small way help those
who know as little of war as I did once, to realise the horror of it,
that loathing it for the hellish thing it is, they may, one and all,
set their faces against war henceforth, with an unshakeable
determination that never again shall it be permitted to maim, to
destroy and blast out of being the noblest works of God.

What I write here I set down deliberately, with no idea of
phrase-making, of literary values or rounded periods; this is and
shall be a plain, trite statement of fact.

And now, one and all, come with me in spirit, lend me your mind's
eyes, and see for yourselves something of what modern war really is.

Behold then a stretch of country--a sea of mud far as the eye can
reach, a grim desolate expanse, its surface ploughed and churned by
thousands of high-explosive shells into ugly holes and tortured heaps
like muddy waves struck motionless upon this muddy sea. The guns are
silent, the cheers and frenzied shouts, the screams and groans have
long died away, and no sound is heard save the noise of my own going.

The sun shone palely and a fitful wind swept across the waste, a
noxious wind, cold and dank, that chilled me with a sudden dread even
while the sweat ran from me. I walked amid shell craters, sometimes
knee-deep in mud; I stumbled over rifles half buried in the slime, on
muddy knapsacks, over muddy bags half full of rusty bombs, and so
upon the body of a dead German soldier. With arms wide-flung and
writhen legs grotesquely twisted he lay there beneath my boot, his
head half buried in the mud, even so I could see that the maggots had
been busy, though the ....[1] had killed them where they clung. So
there he lay, this dead Boche, skull gleaming under shrunken scalp,
an awful, eyeless thing, that seemed to start, to stir and shiver as
the cold wind stirred his muddy clothing. Then nausea and a deadly
faintness seized me, but I shook it off, and shivering, sweating,
forced myself to stoop and touch that awful thing, and, with the
touch, horror and faintness passed, and in their place I felt a deep
and passionate pity, for all he was a Boche, and with pity in my
heart I turned and went my way.

[Footnote 1: Deleted by censor. J.