erations of the Allies; this is the task of the publicist, and at all
times is forbidden to the soldier in the field. Here and there some
striking or significant fact has been allowed to pass the censor; but
the value of the letters does not lie in these things. It is found
rather in the record of how the dreadful yet heroic realities of war
affect an unusually sensitive mind, long trained in moral and romantic
idealism; the process by which this mind adapts itself to unanticipated
and incredible conditions, to acts and duties which lie close to horror,
and are only saved from being horrible by the efficacy of the spiritual
effort which they evoke. Hating the brutalities of War, clearly
perceiving the wide range of its cruelties, yet the heart of the writer
is never hardened by its daily commerce with death; it is purified by
pity and terror, by heroism and sacrifice, until the whole nature seems
fresh annealed into a finer strength.

The intimate nature of these letters makes it necessary to say something
about the writer.

Coningsby Dawson graduated with honours in history from Oxford in 1905,
and in the same year came to the United States with the intention of
taking a theological course at Union Seminary. After a year at the
Seminary he reached the conclusion that his true lifework lay in
literature, and he at once began to fit himself for his vocation. In the
meantime his family left England, and we had made our home in Taunton,
Massachusetts. Here, in a quiet house, amid lawns and leafy elms, he
gave himself with indefatigable ardour to the art of writing. He wrote
from seven to ten hours a day, producing many poems, short stories, and
three novels. Few writers have ever worked harder to attain literary
excellence, or have practised a more austere devotion to their art. I
often marvelled how a young man, fresh from a brilliant career at the
greatest of English Universities, could be content with a life that was
so widely separated from association with men and affairs. I wondered
still more at the patience with which he endured the rebuffs that always
await the beginner in literature, and the humility with which he was
willing to learn the hard lessons of his apprenticeship in literary
form. The secret lay, no doubt, in his secure sense of a vocation, and
his belief that good work could not fail in the end to justify itself.
But, not the less, these four years of obscure drudgery wore upon his
spirit, and hence s