ritten very
unevenly and untidily, with very few erasures, but at times
incoherently and with gaps. In one place he has cut from the newspaper
Rupert Brooke's sonnet, beginning:

"_Blow out, you Bugles, over the rich Dead!_"

and pasted it on to the blank page.

At times he sticks on to the other pages newspaper descriptions that
have pleased him. His own descriptions of the Forest seem to me
influenced by my talks with him, and I remember that it was Nikitin
who spoke of the light like a glass ball and of the green-like water.
For the most part he exhibits, from the beginning of the diary to the
end, extreme practical common sense and he makes, I fancy, a very
strong effort to record quite simply and even naively the truth as he
sees it. At other times he is quite frankly incoherent....

I will give, on another page, my impression of him when I saw him on
my return to the Forest. I am, of course, in no way responsible for
inconsistencies or irrelevances. He had kept a diary since his first
coming to the war and I have already given some extracts from it. The
earlier diary, in one place only, namely his account of his adventure
during his night with Nikitin, is of the full descriptive order. That
one occasion I have already quoted in its entirety. With that
exception the early diary is brief and concerned only with the dryest
recital of events. After the death of Marie Ivanovna, however, its
character entirely changes for reasons which he himself shows. I would
have expected perhaps a certain solemnity or even pomposity in the
style of it; he had never a strong sense of humour. But I find it
written in the very simplest fashion; words here and there are
misspelt and his handwriting is large and round like a schoolboy's.

_Thursday, July 29th._ I intend to write this diary with great fulness
for two reasons--in the first place because I can see that it is of
the greatest importance, if one is to get through this business
properly, to leave no hours empty. The trying thing in this affair is
having nothing to do--nothing one can _possibly_ do. They all,
officers, soldiers, from Nikolai Nikolaievitch to my Nikolai here,
will tell you that. No empty hours for me if I can help it....
Secondly, I really do wish to record exactly my experiences here. I am
perfectly aware that when I'm out of it all, when it's even a day's
march behind me, I shall regard it as frankly incredible--not the
thing itself but the way I felt