sun that
potatoes are rotting in the fields already, and the harvest will be
meagre. The grain, especially that planted last fall, is fairly good, but,
as I told you, after the tempest we had, there is to be no fruit. When I
say none, I absolutely mean none. I have not one cherry. Louise
counted six prunes on my eight trees, and I have just four pears and
not a single apple. Pere's big orchard is in the same condition. In
addition, owing to the terrible dampness,--the ground is wet all the
time,--the slugs eat up all the salad, spoil all the strawberries, and
chew off every young green thing that puts its head above the
ground, and that in spite of very hard work on my part. Every morning
early, and every afternoon, at sundown, I put in an hour's hard work,--
hard, disgusting work,--picking them up with the tongs and dropping
them into boiling water. So you see every kind of war is going on at
the same time. Where is the good of wishing a bad harvest on
Germany, when we get it ourselves at the same time? However, I
suppose that you in the States can help us out, and England has jolly
well fixed it so that no one can easily help Germany out.

XXVI

August 4, 1916

Well, here we are in the third year of the war, as Kitchener foresaw,
and still with a long way to go to the frontier.

Thanks, by the way, for the article about Kitchener. After all, what can
one say of such an end for such a man, after such a career, in which
so many times he might have found a soldier's death--then to be
drowned like a rat, doing his duty? It leaves one simply speechless. I
was, you see. I hadn't a comment to throw at you.

It's hot at last, I'm thankful to say, and equally thankful that the news
from the front is good. It is nothing to throw one's hat in the air about,
but every inch in the right direction is at least prophetic.

Nothing to tell you about. Not the smallest thing happens here. I do
nothing but read my paper, fuss in the garden, which looks very
pretty, do up a bundle for my filleul once in a while, write a few letters,
and drive about, at sundown, in my perambulator. If that is not an
absurd life for a lady in the war zone in these days, I 'd like to know
what it is.

I hope this weather will last. It is good for the war and good for the
crops. But I am afraid I shall hope in vain.

XXVII

September 30, 1916

This has been the strangest summer I ever knew. There have been
so few really s