id in Palestine. Men went to their Calvary
singing Tipperary, rubbish, rhymed doggerel, but their spirit was equal
to that of any Christian martyr in a Roman amphitheatre. "Greater love
hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend." Our
chaps are doing that consciously, willingly, almost without bitterness
towards their enemies; for the rest it doesn't matter whether they sing
hymns or ragtime. They've followed their ideal--freedom--and died for
it. A former age expressed itself in Gregorian chants; ours, no less
sincerely, disguises its feelings in ragtime.

Since September I have been less than a month out of action. The game
doesn't pall as time goes on--it fascinates. We've got to win so that
men may never again be tortured by the ingenious inquisition of modern
warfare. The winning of the war becomes a personal affair to the chaps
who are fighting. The world which sits behind the lines, buys extra
specials of the daily papers and eats three square meals a day, will
never know what this other world has endured for its safety, for no man
of this other world will have the vocabulary in which to tell. But don't
for a moment mistake me--we're grimly happy.

What a serial I'll write for you if I emerge from this turmoil! Thank
God, my outlook is all altered. I don't want to live any longer--only to
live well.

Good-bye and good luck.

Yours,
Coningsby Dawson.

XLVIII

February 5th, 1917.

My Dearest Mother:

Aren't the papers good reading now-a-days with nothing to record but
success? It gives us hope that at last, anyway before the year is out,
the war must end. As you know, I am at the artillery school back of the
lines for a month, taking an extra course. I have been meeting a great
many young officers from all over the world and have listened to them
discussing their program for when peace is declared. Very few of them
have any plans or prospects. Most of them had just started on some
course of professional training to which they won't have the energy to
go back after a two years' interruption. The question one asks is how
will all these men be reabsorbed into civilian life. I'm afraid the
result will be a vast host of men with promising pasts and highly
uncertain futures. We shall be a holiday world without an income. I'm
afraid the hero-worship attitude will soon change to impatience when the
soldiers beat their swords into ploughshares and