mob of broken
counter-jumpers, ragged ex-plumbers and quite unheroic persons. We're
civilians in khaki, but because of the ideals for which we fight we've
managed to acquire soldiers' hearts.

My flow of thought was interrupted by a burst of song in which I was
compelled to join. We're all writing letters around one candle; suddenly
the O.C. looked up and began, God Be With You Till We Meet Again. We
sang it in parts. It was in Southport, when I was about nine years old,
that I first heard that sung. You had gone for your first trip to
America, leaving a very lonely family behind you. We children were
scared to death that you'd be drowned. One evening, coming back from a
walk on the sand-hills, we heard voices singing in a garden, God Be With
You Till We Meet Again. The words and the soft dusk, and the vague
figures in the English summer garden, seemed to typify the terror of all
partings. We've said good-bye so often since, and God has been with us.
I don't think any parting was more hard than our last at the prosaic
dock-gates with the cold wind of duty blowing, and the sentry barring
your entrance, and your path leading back to America while mine led on
to France. But you three were regular soldiers--just as much soldiers as
we chaps who were embarking. One talks of our armies in the field, but
there are the other armies, millions strong, of mothers and fathers and
sisters, who keep their eyes dry, treasure muddy letters beneath their
pillows, offer up prayers and wait, wait, wait so eternally for God to
open another door.

To-morrow I again go forward, which means rising early and taking a long
plod through the snows; that's one reason for not writing any more, and
another is that our one poor candle is literally on its last legs.

Your poem, written years ago when the poor were marching in London, is
often in my mind:

"Yesterday and to-day
Have been heavy with labour and sorrow;
I should faint if I did not see
The day that is after to-morrow."

And there's that last verse which prophesied utterly the spirit in which
we men at the Front are fighting to-day:

"And for me, with spirit elate
The mire and the fog I press thorough,
For Heaven shines under the cloud
Of the day that is after to-morrow."

We civilians who have been taught so long to love our enemies and do
good to them who hate us--much too long ever to make professional
soldiers--are watching with