ne finds most
isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling
of wonder in it; "so long," and yet you think that of me! "so long," and
yet such absolute inability to read my character! "so long," and yet
still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the
little side of it! The dear people who "thought you would like this or
dislike that"--the kind givers of presents even--the little people who
shop for one! The friends who invite one to their queer, soulless, thin
entertainments, with their garish lights; the people who choose a book
for one, who counsel one, even with importunity, to go to some play
which they are "sure we shall like." "So long"--they are old friends,
and yet they thought we should like that play or that book! "So
long"--and yet they think one capable of certain acts or feelings which
do not remotely seem to belong to one! "So long"--and yet they can't
even touch one chord that responds!

We are always quite alone. The communal life is the loneliest of all,
because "yet thou hast not known me." The world comes next in
loneliness, but it is _big_, and with a big soul of its own. The family
life is almost naive in its misunderstanding--no one listens, they just
wait for pauses....

... The worship of the "sane mind" has been a little overdone, I think.
The men who are prone to say of everyone that they "exaggerate a
little," or "are morbid," are like weights in a scale--just, but oh,
how heavy!...

... This war is fine, _fine_, FINE! I know it, and yet I don't get near
the fineness except in the pages of _Punch_! I see streams of men whose
language (Flemish) I don't speak, holding up protecting hands to keep
people from jostling a poor wounded limb, and I watch them sleeping
heavily, or eating oranges and smoking cigarettes down to the last hot
stump, but I don't hear of the heroic stands which I know are made, or
catch the volition of it all. Perhaps only in a voluntary army is such a
thing possible. Our own boys make one's heart beat, but these poor,
dumb, sodden little men, coming in caked with mud--to be patched up and
sent into a hole in the ground again, are simply tragic.

[Page Heading: "THE WOMAN'S TOUCH"]

_7 March._--"The woman's touch." When a woman has been down on her knees
scrubbing for a week, and washing for another week, a man, returning and
finding his house in order, and vaguely conscious of a newer and fresher
smell about it, talks q