oom at the back the dead are prepared for their
last resting place--prepared in a manner which is shocking, but is the
best that can be done. I cannot describe it. In the cool of the
evening, when perhaps the enemy's fire has slackened a little, and the
bullets only sob very faintly overhead, and the shells have ceased
their brutal attentions, stretcher parties come quietly and carry out
the corpses. That is the worst sight of all.

There are no coffins, and the dead, shrouded in white cloth, have
sometimes their booted feet pushing through the coarse fabric in which
they are sewn. Never shall I forget the sight of one man, a great,
long fellow, who seemed immense in his white shroud. A movement of
the bearers struggling under his unaccustomed weight burst his winding
sheet and his feet shot out as if he were making a last effort to
escape from the pitiless grasp of Mother Earth extending her arms
towards him in the form of a narrow trench. There was something
hideous and terrible in these booted feet. One man, unnerved at the
sight, gave a short cry, as if he had been struck. That is the brutal
side of life--death.

There is also no room and not time to give each one a separate grave,
these our dead; and so, strapped to a plank, they are lowered into the
ground, a few shovelfuls of earth are hastily dropped in on top, and
then another corpse is laid down. Sometimes there are three or four in
a single grave, and when the grave is filled up the dead men's order
is written on rough crosses. That is all.

At such burials you may see the real truth which is hidden by the mask
of every-day life. Men you thought were good fellows turn out to be
hearts of stone; the true hearts of gold are generally those who are
devil-may-care and indifferently regarded when there is no _Sturm und
Drang._ I, who have never been religious, begin to understand what
such phrases mean--"that many are called, but few are chosen." It is
not possible that the final valuation can be that of the every-day
world. Then when I think of these things, I long to get away from this
imprisonment; to revalue things in a new light; to see and to
understand.

But as you pass away from this torture room and this execution ground
a sullen anger seizes you. Why should so many be called--why should we
die thus in a hole?...

VIII

THE FAILURE

6th July, 1900.

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I have always found that there is a correcti