men who were just off.

Now about Xmas. I have got a new crop, thank you ever so much, that I
bought at a town near here.

A beautiful cathedral town.

With doors all padded up with sand-bags, the great cathedral towers
above the town, and is seen for miles and miles. A good effort. What fun
they must have had building it. What they believed then they expressed
in outward and visible form. What we think now is (or ought to be) very
different indeed from what they thought then. But I can't remember
having ever seen anything that _begins_ to express what we think (or
ought to think) now.

Everyone in the Church of England now seems to me to think _almost
exactly_ what was thought when this cathedral was built! If this war
achieves nothing else, I pray with all my mind, and all my soul, and all
my strength, that all the sects and all the churches may suddenly feel
tired of all the 1001 little methods of procedure, and say: "Damn it
all! what does all this ancient paraphernalia mean to us? Is God quite
so complicated and involved as we have supposed? Everything else in the
world progresses. Thought progresses. Let us take a deep breath, and
realize that religion ought to be more 'into the future' than even
Zeppelins or Tanks, please."

[Illustration: EXPLOSION OF AN AMUNITION DUMP
The smoke from a large explosion usually assumes a queer tree-like form
and disperses slowly.]

_December 2._

Just been superintending the burying of some horses. A curious job. You
have to disembowel them first. Quite ghoulish. And then head and legs
are cut off, and the whole is buried in a hole 12 feet deep. Up there
they often lie about for some time, and get as smelly as dead human
beings. Back here it all has to be done prestissimo.

The strange thing is that, whereas before the war I should have felt
sick and possibly dreamt about it, now it seems merely more boring than
most other things of the kind.

Up there Tommies and Honourables eat their lunch of sandwiches with lots
and lots of dead people in varying stages of decomposition all round. An
odour more hideous than anything you have ever imagined. But you get
used to it.

[Sidenote: TALKING ABOUT HOME]

"How unpleasant they are to-day," you say to anyone you are with.
And the answer is probably just a laugh. Then you go on (if things are
quiet) to discuss an imaginary day at home. You would smile.

We actually discuss everybody's clothes, the things in the room, th