d trenches.

Dear mother, to go back to those wonderful times of the end of February,
I must repeat that my memory of them is something like that of an
experiment in science. I had conceived violence under a theoretic
formula; I had divined its part in the worlds. But I had not yet
witnessed its actual practice, except in infinitely small examples. And
now at last violence was displayed before me on such a scale that my
whole faculty of receptiveness was called upon to face it. Well, it was
interesting; and I may tell you that I never relaxed from my attitude of
cool and impersonal watchfulness. What I had kept about me of my own
individuality was a certain visual perceptiveness that caused me to
register the setting of things, a setting that dramatised itself as
'artistically' as in any stage-management. During all those minutes I
never relaxed in my resolve to see 'how it was.'

I was very happy to find that the 'intoxication of slaughter' never had
any possession of me. I hope it will always be so. Unfortunately,
contact with the German race has for ever spoilt my opinion of those
people. I cannot quite succeed in quelling a sensibility and a
humanitarianism that I know to be misplaced, and that would make me the
dupe of a treacherous enemy; but I have come to tolerate things which I
had held in abomination as the very negation of life.

I have seen the French soldier fight. He is terrible in action, and
after action magnanimous. That is the phrase. It is a very common
commonplace; our greatest writers and the humblest of our schoolboys
have trotted it out alike; and now my decadent ex-intellectualism finds
nothing better to say at the sight of the soul of the Frenchman.

To Madame de L.

_March 14, 1915._

My mother has told me of the new trial that has just come upon you.
Truly life is crushing for some souls. I know your fortitude, and I know
that you are only too well used to sorrow; but how much I wish that you
had been spared this blow! My mother had written to me of the lack of
any news of Colonel B., and she was anxious. It is the grief of those
dear to us that troubles us out here. But there is in the sight of a
soldier's death a lesson of greatness and of immortality that arms our
hearts; and our desire is that our beloved ones might share it with us.
Be sure that the Colonel's example will bear magnificent fruit. I know,
for I have seen it, what heroism transfigures the soldier whose leader
has fa