d Tortoiseshell butterflies
were flitting to and fro. The sunlight filtered down through the bluish
haze. I rested and let an hour or two slip by. Then I got up and crossed
a little brook and strolled along a narrow path that wound its way
through a copse. The ground was starred with wood-anemones, oxlips,
violets, cuckoo-flowers, and in damp places with green-golden saxifrage.
I came to a small cottage that had pots of flowers in every window. I
sat down while a hospitable old woman made coffee and chattered volubly
in Flemish. Another soldier arrived soon after. Had I heard the news?
The Germans had broken through on the Somme and had captured Bapaume. I
asked him if he had seen it in print. No, he had heard it from an A.S.C.
driver. He hoped it wasn't true, but he feared it was.

I returned to camp full of suppressed excitement.

Something was wrong. The shelling of the back-areas continued; air-raids
became more and more frequent. These were ominous signs.

Then the newspapers arrived. The Somme front had collapsed. The Fifth
Army was in full retreat. The Germans had taken Bapaume and Peronne and
were threatening Amiens.

* * * * *

Had I been living in Germany during the war I would have felt a powerful
tendency to defend the cause of the Allies, to excuse their misdeeds, to
overrate their ability, while being highly critical and censorious of
every German shortcoming.

A nation at war is a mob whose very blatancy, injustice and cruelty
drive one to hatred and opposition. The enemy mob seems less detestable
because it is out of sight and one thinks almost involuntarily: "It
cannot be as bad as our own."

I could not bear to hear a victory joyfully announced. The jubilation
and the self-glorification of the crowd filled me with loathing, and I
could only think of the intensified slaughter and misery that are the
price of every victory. They who pay the price, they alone have the
right to rejoice, but they do not rejoice. The German mob revealed its
depravity when it hung out flags in the streets to celebrate the first
German victories. And, when the first battle of Cambrai was won, London
jeered at the bereaved and mocked the dead by ringing the joy-bells.

Every genuine patriot is called a traitor in his own country. But
patriotism, however genuine, is a thing that must be surmounted. There
is only one good that war can bring to a nation--defeat. A patriot,
loving his own cou