en mentioned in despatches.

Dear mother, how shall I ever speak of the unspeakable things I have had
to see? But how shall I ever tell of the certainties this tempest has
made clear to me? Duty; effort.

_February 23._

DEAREST BELOVED MOTHER,--A second day in billets. To-morrow we go to the
front. Darling, I can't write to-day. Let us draw ever nearer to the
eternal, let us remain devoted to our duty. I know how your thoughts fly
to meet mine, and I turn mine towards the happiness of wisdom. Let us
take courage; let me be brave among these young dead men, and be you
brave in readiness. God is over us.

_February 26_
(a splendid afternoon).

DEAR MOTHER,--Here we are again upon the battlefield. We have climbed
the hill from which it would be better to praise the glory of God than
to condemn the horrors of men. Innumerable dead at the setting-out of
our march; but they grow fewer, leaving here and there some poor stray
body, the colour of clay--a painful encounter. Our losses are what are
called 'serious' in despatches.

At all events I can assure you that our men are admirable and their
resignation is heroic. All deplore this infamous war, but nearly all
feel that the fulfilment of a hideous duty is the one only thing that
justifies the horrible necessity of living at such a time as this.

Dear mother, I cannot write more. The plain is settling to sleep under
colours of violet and rose. How can things be so horrible?

_February 28_ (in a billet).

DEAR BELOVED MOTHER, AND DEAR BELOVED GRANDMOTHER,--I am writing to you,
having just struggled out of a most appalling nightmare, and out of
Dantesque scenes that I have lived through. Things that Gustave Dore had
the courage to picture through the text of the _Divina Commedia_ have
come to pass, with all the variety and circumstance of fact. In the
midst of labours that happily tend to deaden one's feelings, I have been
able to gather the better fruits of pain.

On the 24th, in the evening, we returned to our positions, from which
the more hideous of the traces of battle had been partly removed. Only a
few places were still scattered with fragments of men that were taking
on the semblance of that clay to which they were returning. The weather
was fine and cold, and the heights we had gained brought us into the
very sky. The immensities appeared only as lights: the higher light, a
brilliance of stars; the lower light, a glow of fires. The frightful
bombardm