f a woman--" Monty was saying, and, as the words
fell, the bearers raised with ropes the corpse from off its
stretcher, and began to lower it into the grave.

"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust--" At this point the
kindly French and British onlookers and the tall brown Sikh picked
up their handfuls of earth, and threw them upon the body as their
compliment to the dead.

The sight of Jimmy going down into his grave on the lengthening
ropes started in me a real grief, and, when the strangers paid their
simple respect to the unknown dead, I felt momentarily stricken, and
shivered with pride that I had known him whom they thus honoured.
But all this passed away, and left a dull indifference. The war was
fast teaching me its petrifying lesson--to be incapable of horror. I
tried to recover my sorrow, thinking that I ought to do so, but I
could feel no emotion at all. "This sort of thing," ran my thoughts,
"seems to be the order of the day for the generation in which we
were born. It's all very fine, or all very unfair. I don't know. The
old Colonel and Monty said it was very glorious, so no doubt it must
be. But, whatever it is, we're all in it. Poor old Jimmy."

So I fell into a mood that was partly the resignation of perplexity,
partly a sulkiness with fate. With the same blunted mind, perceiving
no pain, I watched the Greek diggers, at the end of the service, as
they began to shovel the earth on to my friend's body. First they
tossed it so that it fell in a little pile on his breast; then they
threw it, dust and clods, over his feet, till at last only the head,
hooded in its blanket, was uncovered. They turned their attention to
that, and the earth fell heavily on Jimmy Doon's face. I turned
unfeelingly away.

Poor Jimmy, a mere super in the Gallipoli drama, had played his
trifling part on the stage, and was now sleeping in the Green Room.

Was it all very fine, or all very unfair? In my tent that evening I
worried the problem out. At first it seemed only sordid that James
Doon should have his gracious body returned by that foul Peninsula,
like some empty crate for which it had no further use, to be buried
without firing party, drums or bugles. But every now and then I
caught a glimpse of my mistake. I was thinking in terms of matter
instead of in terms of spiritual realities. I must try to get the
poetic gift of the old Colonel and Monty, whose thoughts did not
prison themselves in flesh but travelled eas