so with a smile, as he sat with me at tea
on that memorable Wednesday afternoon, and of all that he did so
simply to relieve the strain on our nerves that trying day. I know
nothing about him--who he was--what he had for family--he was just a
brave, kindly, human being, who had met me for a few hours, passed
on--and passed out. He is only one of thousands, but he is the one
whose sympathetic voice I had heard and who, in all the hurry and
fatigue of those hard days, had had time to stop and console us here,
and whom I had hoped to see again; and I grieved with his men for
him.

I could not write last week. I had no heart to send the usual greetings
of the season. Words still mean something to me, and when I sat
down, from force of habit, to write the letters I have been accustomed
to send at this season, I simply could not. It seemed to me too absurd
to even celebrate the anniversary of the days when the angel hosts
sang in the skies their "Peace on earth, good will to men" to herald
the birth of Him who added to religion the command, "Love one
another," and man, only forty miles away, occupied in wholesale
slaughter. We have a hard time juggling to make our pretensions and
our acts fit.

If this cold and lack of coal continues I am not likely to see much or
write much until the spring campaign opens. Here we still hear the
guns whenever Rheims or Soissons are bombarded, but no one
ever, for a minute, dreams that they will ever come nearer.

Though I could not send you any greetings last week, I can say, with
all my heart, may 1915 bring us all peace and contentment!

IX

January 21, 1915

I have been trying to feel in a humor to write all this month, but what
with the changeable weather, a visit to Paris, and the depression of
the terrible battle at Soissons,--so near to us--I have not had the
courage. All the same, I frankly confess that it has not been as bad
as I expected. I begin to think things are never as bad as one
expects.

Do you know that it is not until now that I have had a passport from
my own country? I have never needed one. No one here has ever
asked me for one, and it was only when I was in Paris a week ago
that an American friend was so aghast at the idea that I had, in case
of accident, no real American protection, that I went to the Embassy,
for the first time in my life, and asked for one, and seriously took the
oath of allegiance. I took it so very seriously that it was impr