under a starry sky, he makes his bed in an excavation, and
lies there watching the crescent moon, and waits for dawn; now and again
a shell bursts, earth falls about him, and then silence returns to the
frozen soil: 'I have paid the price, but I have had moments of solitude
full of God.' Again, one evening, after five days of horror ('we have no
officers left--they all died as brave men'), he suddenly comes upon the
body of a friend; 'a white body, splendid under the moon. I lay down
near him.' In the quietness, by the side of the dead man, nothing
remains but beauty and peace.

* * * * *

These letters are to be anonymous, at least so long as any hope remains
that he who was lost may return. It is enough to know that they were
written by a Frenchman who, in love and faith, bore his part in the
general effort, the common peril, glad to renounce himself in the pain
and the devotion of his countrymen. By a happy fortune that he did not
foresee when he left his clean solitude for the sweat, the servitude,
and the throng, he no doubt produced the best of himself in these
letters; and it may be doubted whether, in the course of a successful
artist's life, it would have been given to him to express himself with
so much completeness. This is a thought that may strengthen those who
love him to accept whatever has come to pass. His soul is here, a more
essential soul perhaps, and a more beautiful, than they had known. It
was in war that Marcus Aurelius also wrote his thoughts. Possibly the
worst is needful for the manifestation of the whole of human greatness.
We marvel how the soul can so discover in itself the means to oppose
suffering and death. Thus have many of our sons revealed themselves in
the day of trial, to the wonder of France, until then unaware of all
that she really was. That is how these pages touch us so closely. He who
wrote them had attuned himself with his countrymen. Through the more
mystical acts of his mind we perceive the sublime message sent to us
from the front, more or less explicitly, by others of our brothers and
our sons--the high music that goes up still from the whole of France at
war. In all his comrades assembled for the great task, he too had
recognised the best and the deepest things that his own heart held, and
so he speaks of them constantly--especially of the simplest of the
men--with so great respect and love. Far from ordinary ambitions and
cares, the thin