? This is war.

A nation or a people want more sea-board or more trade, so they begin to
kill youth, and to torture and to burn, and God himself may ask, "Where
is my beautiful flock?" No one answers. It is war. We must expect a
"list of casualties." "The Germans have lost more than we have done;"
"We must go on, even if the war lasts ten years;" "A million more men
are needed"--thus the fools called men talk! But Youth looks up with
haggard eyes, and Youth, grown old, learns that Death alone is merciful.

One sees even in soldiers' jokes that the thought of death is not far
off. I said to one man, "You have had a narrow squeak," and he replied,
"I don't mind if I get there first so long as I can stoke up for those
Germans." Another, clasping the hand of his dead Captain, said, "Put
plenty of sandbags round heaven, sir, and don't let a German through."

The other day, when the forward movement was made in France and Belgium,
Charles's Regiment, the 9th Welch, was told to attack at a certain
point, which could only be reached across an open space raked by
machine-gun fire. They were not given the order to move for twelve days,
during which time the men hardly slept. When the charge had to be made
the roar of guns made speaking quite impossible, so directions were
given by sending up rockets. When the rockets appeared, not a single man
delayed an instant in making the attack. One young officer, in the
trench where Charles was, had a football, and this he flung over the
parapet, and shouting, "Come on, boys!" he and the men of the regiment
played football in the open and in front of the guns. Right across the
gun-raked level they kicked the ball, and when they reached the enemy's
lines only a few of them were left.

Charles wrote, "I am too old to see boys killed."

Colonel Walton, with a handful of his regiment, was the only officer to
get through the three lines of the enemy's trenches, and he and his men
dug themselves in. Just in front of them where they paused, he saw a
fine young officer come along the road on a motor bicycle, carrying
despatches. The next minute a high-explosive shell burst, and, to use
his own words, "There was not enough of the young officer to put on a
threepenny bit." Always men tell me there is nothing left to bury. One
minute there is a splendid piece of upstanding, vigorous manhood, and
the next there is no finding one piece of him to lay in the sod.

[Page Heading: A LESSON FOR TURKS]