nted woods
You who dare."

Maybe what re-creates one for the moment is the British officer's
uniform, and even more the fact that you are not asked, but expected, to
do your duty. So I came back quite unruffled across battered trenches
and silent mounds to write this letter to you.

My dear father, I'm over thirty, and yet just as much a little boy as
ever. I still feel overwhelmingly dependent on your good opinion and
love. I'm glad that they are black days when you have no letters from
me. I love to think of the rush to the door when the postman rings and
the excited shouting up the stairs, "Quick, one from Con."

February 2nd.

You see by the writing how tired I was when I reached this point. It's
nearly twenty-four hours later and again night. The gramophone is
playing an air from _La Tosca_ to which the guns beat out a bass
accompaniment. I close my eyes and picture the many times I have heard
the (probably) German orchestras of Broadway Joy Palaces play that same
music. How incongruous that I should be listening to it here and under
these circumstances! It must have been listened to so often by gay
crowds in the beauty places of the world. A romantic picture grows up in
my mind of a blue night, the laughter of youth in evening dress, lamps
twinkling through trees, far off the velvety shadow of water and
mountains, and as a voice to it all, that air from _La Tosca_. I can
believe that the silent people near by raise themselves up in their
snow-beds to listen, each one recalling some ecstatic moment before the
dream of life was shattered.

There's a picture in the Pantheon at Paris, I remember; I believe it's
called _To Glory_. One sees all the armies of the ages charging out of
the middle distance with Death riding at their head. The only glory that
I have discovered in this war is in men's hearts--it's not external.
Were one to paint the spirit of this war he would depict a mud
landscape, blasted trees, an iron sky; wading through the slush and
shell-holes would come a file of bowed figures, more like outcasts from
the Embankment than soldiers. They're loaded down like pack animals,
their shoulders are rounded, they're wearied to death, but they go on
and go on. There's no "To Glory" about what we're doing out here;
there's no flash of swords or splendour of uniforms. There are only very
tired men determined to carry on. The war will be won by tired men who
could never again pass an insurance test, a