in' for? D'you want ter leave the 'Uns in France an'
Belgium an' Serbia an' all? It ain't fer us to make peace. It's fer
the 'Uns. An' if you are done in, you got to go under some day. I
ain't sure as they ain't the lucky ones what's got it over and done
with. And arter all, it's not us what's not proper. The 'Uns 'ave 'ad
two fer our one.

ALBERT. They got dug-outs as deep as 'ell, it don't touch 'em.

JINKS. (_but without conviction_). Don't talk silly.

POZZIE. Oi reckon we got to go through with it. But they didn't ought
to give a chap short rations. That's what takes the 'eart out of a
chap.

XI

LETTER TO AN ARMY CHAPLAIN[2]

_April 17, 1916._

Thank you very much for your letter of a week ago, which I should
have tried to answer before if I had had time. I am afraid that your
confidence in me as an oracle will be severely shaken when I confess
that I was once on the eve of being ordained, and that in the end
I funked it because it seemed such an awfully difficult job, and I
couldn't see my way to going through with it.

[Footnote 2: This chapter is the actual text of a letter from "A
Student in Arms," and like the most of the other chapters appeared
originally in the _Spectator_.]

However, I must try to answer your letter as best I can, and I hope
that you will not mind my speaking plainly what I think, and will
remember that I do so in no spirit of superiority, but very humbly, as
one who has funked the great work that you have had the pluck to take
up, and who has even failed in the little bit of work that he himself
did try and do. This last means that I have no business to be an
officer. It was the biggest mistake in my life, for my position in the
ranks did give me a hold on the fellows, the strength of which I have
only realized since I left.

Now then to the point. As I understand you, your difficulty is that
you feel that you must devote yourself to strengthening a very few men
who are already Churchmen, and to whom you can talk in the language
of the Church of things which you know they want to hear about, or
you must appeal to the crowd of those who are merely good fellows and
often sad scamps too, who must be caught with buns and cinemas and who
are very difficult to get any farther.

I fancy that you, like me, when you see a fine dashing young fellow,
with a touch of honesty and recklessness and wonderful mystery of
youth in his eyes, love him as a brother, and long to do somet