distance makes you start and shiver for a
moment--reflex action of the nerves. That is annoying. We both decided
we would willingly change places with you and take a turn at defending
your doubtless excellently executed trenches at Liberton.

The line to the ----[18] has just gone. It's almost certain death to
relay it in the day-time. Cadell and his men are discussing the chances
while somebody else has started a musical-box. A man has gone out; I
wonder if he will come back. The rest of the men have gone to sleep
again. That gun outside the window is getting on my nerves. Well, well!

The shrapnel fire appears to have stopped for the present. No, there's a
couple together. If they fire over this farm I hope they don't send me
back to D.H.Q.

Do you know what I long for more than anything else? A clean, unhurried
breakfast with spotless napery and shining silver and porridge and
kippers. I don't think these long, lazy after-breakfast hours at Oxford
were wasted. They are a memory and a hope out here. The shrapnel is
getting nearer and more frequent. We are all hoping it will kill some
chickens in the courtyard. The laws against looting are so strict.

What an excellent musical-box, playing quite a good imitation of
_Cavalleria Rusticana_. I guess we shall have to move soon. Too many
shells. Too dark to write any more----

After all, quite the most important things out here are a fine meal and
a good bath. If you consider the vast area of the war the facts that we
have lost two guns or advanced five miles are of very little importance.
War, making one realise the hopeless insignificance of the individual,
creates in one such an immense regard for self, that so long as one
does well it matters little if four officers have been killed
reconnoitring or some wounded have had to be left under an abandoned gun
all night. I started with an immense interest in tactics. This has
nearly all left me and I remain a more or less efficient
despatch-carrying animal--a part of a machine realising the hopeless,
enormous size of the machine.

The infantry officer after two months of modern war is a curious
phenomenon.[19] He is probably one of three survivors of an original
twenty-eight. He is not frightened of being killed; he has forgotten to
think about it. But there is a sort of reflex fright. He becomes either
cautious and liable to sudden panics, or very rash indeed, or absolutely
mechanical in his actions. The first state me