husband after the big naval battle, wrote to
Mrs. Page in a sort of rhapsody and with evident surprise that the
Admiral really did not seem older! The weight of this thing is so
prodigious that it is changing all men who have to do with it. Men
and women (who do not wear mourning) mention the death of their
sons in a way that a stranger might mistake for indifference. And
it has a curious effect on marriages. Apparently every young fellow
who gets a week's leave from the trenches comes home and marries
and, of course, goes straight back--especially the young officers.
You see weddings all day as you pass the favourite churches; and
already the land is full of young widows.

_To Edwin A. Alderman_[35]

Embassy of the U.S.A., London,

June 22, 1916.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I shall not forget how good you were to take time to write me a
word about the meeting of the Board--_the_ Board: there's no other
one in that class--at Hampton[36], and I did most heartily
appreciate the knowledge that you all remembered me. Alas! it's a
long, long time ago when we all met--so long ago that to me it
seems a part of a former incarnation. These three years--especially
these two years of the war--have changed my whole outlook on life
and foreshortened all that came before. I know I shall never link
back to many things (and alas! too, to many people) that once
seemed important and surely were interesting. Life in these
trenches (five warring or quarrelling governments mining and
sapping under me and shooting over me)--two years of universal
ambassadorship in this hell are enough--enough I say, even for a
man who doesn't run away from responsibilities or weary of toil.
And God knows how it has changed me and is changing me: I sometimes
wonder, as a merely intellectual and quite impersonal curiosity.

Strangely enough I keep pretty well--very well, in fact. Perhaps
I've learned how to live more wisely than I knew in the old days;
perhaps again, I owe it to my old grandfather who lived (and
enjoyed) ninety-four years. I have walked ten miles to-day and I
sit down as the clock strikes eleven (P.M.) to write this letter.

You will recall more clearly than I certain horrible, catastrophic,
universal-ruin passages in Revelation--monsters swallowing the