t and one takes everything as it comes with a joke. The men are
splendid--their cheeriness comes up bubbling whenever the occasion calls
for the dumps. Certainly there are fine qualities which war, despite its
unnaturalness, develops. I'm hats off to every infantry private I meet
nowadays.

God bless you and all of you.
Yours lovingly, Con.

The reference in the previous letter to a cross is to a little bronze
cross of Francis of Assisi.

Many years ago I visited Assisi, and, on leaving, the monks gave me four
of these small bronze crosses, assuring me that those who wore them were
securely defended in all peril by the efficacious prayers of St.
Francis. Just before Coningsby left Shorncliff to go to France he wrote
to us and asked if we couldn't send him something to hang round his neck
for luck. We fortunately had one of these crosses of St. Francis at the
ranch, and his sister--the M. of these letters-sent it to him. It
arrived safely, and he has worn it ever since.

XI

September 15th, 1916.

DEAR FATHER:

Your last letter to me was written on a quiet morning in August--in the
summer house at Kootenay. It came up yesterday evening on a water-cart
from the wagon-lines to a scene a little in contrast.

It's a fortnight to-day since I left England, and already I've seen
action. Things move quickly in this game, and it is a game--one which
brings out both the best and the worst qualities in a man. If
unconscious heroism is the virtue most to be desired, and heroism spiced
with a strong sense of humour at that, then pretty well every man I have
met out here has the amazing guts to wear his crown of thorns as though
it were a cap-and-bells. To do that for the sake of corporate
stout-heartedness is, I think, the acme of what Aristotle meant by
virtue. A strong man, or a good man or a brainless man, can walk to meet
pain with a smile on his mouth because he knows that he is strong enough
to bear it, or worthy enough to defy it, or because he is such a fool
that he has no imagination. But these chaps are neither particularly
strong, good, nor brainless; they're more like children, utterly casual
with regard to trouble, and quite aware that it is useless to struggle
against their elders. So they have the merriest of times while they can,
and when the governess, Death, summons them to bed, they obey her with
unsurprised quietness. It sends the mercury of one's optimism rising to
see the way t