,
I'll praise God for that. And it doesn't let up a single day. And
I'm no worse off than everybody else.

So this over-weary world goes, dear Effendi; but the longest day
shades at last down to twilight and rest; and so this will be. And
poor old Europe will then not be worth while for the rest of our
lives--a vast grave and ruin where unmated women will mourn and
starvation will remain for years to come.

God bless us.

Sincerely yours, with my love to all the boys,
W.H.P.

_To Frank N. Doubleday_

London, November 9, 1917.

DEAR EFFENDI:

... This infernal thing drags its slow length along so that we
cannot see even a day ahead, not to say a week, or a year. If any
man here allowed the horrors of it to dwell on his mind he would go
mad, so we have to skip over these things somewhat lightly and try
to keep the long, definite aim in our thoughts and to work away
distracted as little as possible by the butchery and by the
starvation that is making this side of the world a shambles and a
wilderness. There is hardly a country on the Continent where people
are not literally starving to death, and in many of them by
hundreds of thousands; and this state of things is going to
continue for a good many years after the war. God knows we (I mean
the American people) are doing everything we can to alleviate it
but there is so much more to be done than any group of forces can
possibly do, that I have a feeling that we have hardly touched the
borders of the great problem itself. Of course here in London we
are away from all that. In spite of the rations we get quite enough
to eat and it's as good as it is usually in England, but we have no
right to complain. Of course we are subject to air raids, and the
wise air people here think that early next spring we are going to
be bombarded with thousands of aeroplanes, and with new kinds of
bombs and gases in a well-organized effort to try actually to
destroy London. Possibly that will come; we must simply take our
chance, every man sticking to his job. Already the slate shingles
on my roof have been broken, and bricks have been knocked down my
chimney; the sky-light was hit and glass fell down all through the
halls, and the nose of a shrapnel shell, weighing eight pounds,
fell just