not speaking only for myself.

There's just one beastly sensation when you're half way between your
parapet and theirs--other fellows say they've felt it too--when you're
afraid it (the feeling) should fizzle out before you get there. But it
doesn't. It grows more and more so, simply swinging you on to them, and
that swing makes up for all the rotten times put together. You needn't
be sorry for us. It's waste of pity.

I know Don and Dorothy and Dad and Ronny aren't sorry for us. But I'm
not so sure of Michael and Mother.--Always your loving,

NICKY.

May, 1915.
B.E.F., FRANCE

My Dear Mick,--It's awfully decent of you to write so often when you
loathe writing, especially about things that bore you. But you needn't
do that. We get the news from the other fronts in the papers more or
less; and I honestly don't care a damn what Asquith is saying or what
Lloyd George is doing or what Northcliffe's motives are. Personally, I
should say he was simply trying, like most of us, to save his country.
Looks like it. But you can tell him from me, if he gets them to send us
enough shells out _in time_ we shan't worry about his motives. Anyhow
that sort of thing isn't in your line, old man, and Dad can do it much
better than you, if you don't mind my saying so.

What I want to know is what Don and Dorothy are doing, and the last
sweet thing Dad said to Mother--I'd give a day's rest in my billet for
one of his _worst_ jokes. And I like to hear about Morrie going on the
bust again, too--it sounds so peaceful. Only if it really is anxiety
about me that makes him do it, I wish he'd leave off thinking about me,
poor old thing.

More than anything I want to know how Ronny is; how she's looking and
what she's feeling; you'll be able to make out a lot, and she may tell
you things she won't tell the others. That's why I'm glad you're there
and not here.

And as for that--why go on worrying? I do know how you feel about it. I
think I always did, in a way. I never thought you were a "putrid
Pacifist." Your mind's all right. You say the War takes me like
religion; perhaps it does; I don't know enough about religion to say,
but it seems near enough for a first shot. And when you say it doesn't
take you that way, that you haven't "got" it, I can see that that
expresses a fairly understandable state of mind. Of course, I know it
isn't funk. If you'd happened to think of the Ultimatum first, instead
of the Go