been more poisonous. But mind you, we did not all
go wrong, by any means, though I believe that some fellows did, both
officers and men, who would not have done so if they had stayed at
home with their mothers, sisters, sweethearts, or wives.

So much for the Army at home. When we cross the Channel every feature
is a hundred times intensified. Consider the fighting man in the
trenches--and I am still speaking of both officers and men--the most
ordinary refinements of life are conspicuously absent. There is no
water to wash in. Vermin abound, sleeping and eating accommodations
are frankly disgusting. One is obliged for the time to live like a
pig. Added to this one is all the time in a state of nervous tension.
One gets very little sleep. Every night has its anxieties and
responsibilities. Danger or death may come at any moment. So for a
week or a fortnight or a month, as the case may be. Then comes the
return to billets, to comparative safety and comfort--the latter
nothing to boast about though! Tension is relaxed. There is an
inevitable reaction. Officers and men alike determine to "gather
rosebuds" while they may. Their bodies are fit, their wills are
relaxed. If they are built that way, and an opportunity offers, they
will "satisfy the lusts of the flesh."

When there is real fighting to be done the dangers of the
after-reaction are intensified. You who sit at home and read of
glorious bayonet charges do not realize what it means to the man
behind the bayonet. You don't realize the repugnance for the first
thrust--a repugnance which has got to be overcome. You don't realize
the change that comes over a man when his bayonet is wet with the
blood of his first enemy. He "sees red." The primitive "blood-lust,"
kept under all his life by the laws and principles of peaceful
society, surges through his being, transforming him, maddening him
with the desire to kill, kill, kill! Ask any one who has been through
it if this is not true. And that letting loose of a primitive lust is
not going to be without its effect on a man's character.

At the same time, of course, not all of us become animals out here.
There are other influences at work. Caring for the wounded, burying
the mutilated dead, cause one to hate war, and to value ten times more
the ways of peace. Many are saved from sinking in the scale, by a love
of home which is able to bridge the gulf which separates them
from their beloved. The letters of my platoon are la