ten. Then new friends were made and new interests arose. It
became impossible to write, because--oddest of reasons--after a time
there was nothing to say. The old common interests had vanished.

From time to time we who remained in a camp--workers there--got news
of one friend or another, heard that some boy we knew had won
distinction for his gallantry. Then we rejoiced. Or, far oftener, we
found a well-known name in the casualty lists, and we sorrowed.

Sometimes our friends came back to us, wounded afresh or ground down
again to sickness by the pitiless machine. They emerged from the fog
which surrounded for us the mysterious and awful "Front," and we
welcomed them. But they told us very little. The soldier, whatever
his position or education was in civil life, is strangely
inarticulate. He will speak in general terms of "stunts" and scraps,
of being "up against it," and of "carrying on"; but of the living
details of life in the trenches or on the battlefield he has little
to say. Still less will he speak of feelings, emotions, hopes, and
fears. I suppose that life in the midst of visible death is too awful
a thing to talk of and that there is no language in which to express
the terrific waves of fear, horror, hope, and exaltation.

Perhaps we may find in the very monstrousness of this war an
explanation of the soldier's unceasing effort to treat the whole
business as a joke, to laugh at the very worst that can befall him.
With men of other nations it is different no doubt. The French fight
gloriously and seem to live in a high, heroic mood. The men of our
empire, of all parts of it, jest in the presence of terror, perhaps
because the alternative to jesting is either fear or tears. Others
may misunderstand us. Often we do not understand ourselves. It is not
easy to think of Sam Weller or Mark Tapley as the hero of a stricken
field. Yet it is by men with Sam Weller's quaint turn of wit and Mark
Tapley's unfailing cheerfulness that the great battles in France and
Belgium are being won.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
words and intent.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Padre in France, by George A. Birmingham

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