h dogged tenacity.

Here and there were men who were self-conscious, wondering what would
become of themselves. I was one of them, and we were none the better
for it. Most of the fellows, though, had forgotten themselves. They no
longer flinched, or feared. They had got beyond that. They were just
set on clinging to that mound and keeping the Huns at bay until their
officer gave the word to retire. Their spirit was the spirit of the
oarsman, the runner, or the footballer, who has strained himself to
the utmost, who if he stopped to wonder whether he could go on or not
would collapse; but who, because he does not stop to wonder, goes on
miraculously long after he should, by all the laws of nature, have
succumbed to sheer exhaustion.

Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officer
who seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I must
frankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay.
He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and how
for lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men,
he had been forced back; and how for eight hours he had disputed every
inch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds with
the dumb mechanical tenacity of utter exhaustion. "You might go to
H.Q.," he said at last, "and tell them where I am, and that I can't
hold on without ammunition and a barrage."

I am afraid that I went with joy on that errand. I did not want to
stay on those chalk mounds.

* * * * *

I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank God it has gone well
elsewhere; but here we are where we started. Day and night we have
done nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees the
dead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted and
blackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk of
glory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softened
the gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated and
tortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war.
Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and lust of
power. Maybe through all this evil and pain we shall be purged of many
sins. God grant it! If ever there were martyrs, some of these were
martyrs, facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confronted
the saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fierce
fanatical exalt