ll that remains for
the preacher to say is this: Nothing but Christianity will ever
gather in that harvest of spiritual ideals which alone will
make good our prodigal outlay; for, after all, we have sown the
world with the broken dreams and spilled ambitions of a
generation of schoolboys....

"'All you who have suffered, you fathers and mothers, remember
this: only by turning your sufferings into the seeds of
God-like things will you make their memory beautiful.'

"Oh, Rupert, I was elevated by all he said, and I prayed that
you might go on with willingness and resolution to the end,
and that I might face the last few weeks of the war with
courage. I thought of the remark of your old Cheshire Colonel,
that, instead of wandering during these years among the
undistinguished valleys, you have been transferred straight to
the mountain-tops. Do you remember how I used to call you 'my
mountain boy'? The name has a new meaning now. Even if you are
in danger at this time, I try to be proud. I think of you as on
white heights."

Sec.3

"Only by turning your sufferings into the seeds of God-like things
will you make their memory beautiful."

As I copied just now those last words of Monty's sermon, I laid down
my pencil on the dug-out floor with a little start. As in a
flashlight I saw their truth. They created in my mind the picture of
that AEgean evening, when Monty turned the moment of Doe's death,
which so nearly brought me discouragement and debasement, into an
ennobling memory. And I foresaw him going about healing the sores of
this war with the same priestly hand.

Yes, there are reasons why such wistful visions should haunt me now.
Everything this evening has gone to produce a certain exaltation in
me. First, there has been the bombardment, with its thought of going
over the top to-morrow. Then comes my mother's glowing letter, which
somehow has held me enthralled, so that I find sentences from it
reiterating themselves in my mind, just as they did in the old
schooldays. And lastly, there has been the joyous sense of having
completed my book, on which for three years I have laboured lovingly
in tent, and billet, and trench.

I meant to close it on the last echo of Monty's sermon. But the
fascination was on me, and I felt I wanted to go on writing. I had
so lost myself in the old scenes of schoolroom, playing-fields,
starl