Three months since the battle at Verdun began, and it is still going
on, with the Germans hardly more than four miles from the city, and
yet it begins to look as if they knew themselves that the battle--the
most terrible the world has ever seen--was a failure. Still, I have
changed my mind. I begin to believe that had Germany centred all
her forces on that frontier in August, 1914, when her first-line troops
were available, and their hopes high, she would probably have
passed. No one can know that, but it is likely, and many military men
think so. Isn't it a sort of poetic justice to think that it is even
possible that had Germany fought an honorable war she might have
got to Paris? "Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad."

I do nothing but work in the garden on rare days when it does not
rain, and listen to the cannon. That can't be very interesting stuff to
make a letter of. The silence here, which was so dear to me in the
days when I was preparing the place, still hangs over it. But, oh, the
difference! Now and then, in spite of one's self, the very thought of all
that is going on so very near us refuses to take its place and keep in
the perspective, it simply jumps out of the frame of patriotism and the
welfare of the future. Then the only thing to do is to hunt for the visible
consolations--and one always finds them.

For example--wouldn't it seem logical that such a warfare would
brutalize the men who are actually in it? It doesn't. It seems to have
just the contrary effect. I can't tell you how good the men are to one
another, or how gentle they are to the children. It is strange that it
should be so, but it is. I don't try to understand it, I merely set it down
for you.

XXV

June 16, 1916

You can imagine how trying and unseasonable the weather is when I
tell you that I not only had a fire yesterday, but that I went to bed with
a hotwater bottle. Imagine it! I have only been able to eat out-of-doors
once so far.

This is not a letter--just a line, lest you worry if you do not hear that I
am well. I am too anxiously watching that see-saw at Verdun, with the
German army only four miles from the city, at the end of the fourth
month, to talk about myself, and in no position to write about things
which you know. One gets dumb, though not hopeless. To add to our
anxieties the crops are not going to be good. It was continually wet at
planting time, and so cold, and there has been so little