e the sun does not see men gathered together to honour him,
but shines only upon their hatred, and where the moon, too, looks upon
treachery and anguish.

The other day, overlooking this great prospect of earth welcoming the
spring, I remembered the joy I once had to be a man. And now to be a
man----

Our neighbour regiment, that of R.L., has returned with a few of its
companies reduced to some two-score men.

I dare not now speak of hope. The grace for which one may still pray is
a complete sense of what beauty the passing hour can still yield us. It
is a new manner of 'living one's life' that literature had not foreseen.

Dear Grandmother, how well your tenderness has served to keep me up in
my time of trial.

_March 22._

A splendid sun; looking on it one is amazed to see the world at war.
Spring has come in triumph. It has surprised mankind in the act of
hatred, in the act of outrage upon creation. The despatches tell us
little, fortunately, of what is happening.

Being now these twenty-one days away from the front, I find it difficult
to re-accustom myself to the thought of the monstrous things going on
there. Indeed, dear mother, I know that your life and mine have had but
one object, one aim, and that even in the time we are passing through,
we have never lost sight of it, but have constantly tried to draw
nearer.

Therefore our lives may not have been altogether useless. This is the
only thought to comfort an ambitious soul--to forecast the influence and
the consequences of its acts.

I believe that if longer life had been granted me I should never have
relaxed in my purpose. Having no certainty but that of the present, I
have tried to put myself to the best use.

_March 25._

Here I am living this life in the earth again. I found the very hole
that I left last month. Nothing has been done while I was away; a
formidable attack was attempted, but it failed. The regiments ordered to
engage had neither our dash nor our perfect steadiness under fire. They
succeeded only in getting themselves cut to pieces, and in bringing upon
us the most atrocious bombardment that ever was. It seems the action
before this was nothing to be compared with it. My company lost a great
many men by the aerial bombs. These projectiles measure a metre in
height and twenty-seven centimetres in diameter; they describe a high
curve, and fall vertically, exploding in the narrowest passages. We are
several metres deep undergr