wonderful truth of your love for me. It did not seem real when I
was with you, but, now that we are separated, I know that it is
real. Mostly my mind contains only two things--this constant memory
of you, and that other terrible thing of which I will not speak. All
else that I think or do seems to be mechanical.

The work, the training, is not difficult for me, though so many boys
find it desperately hard. You know I followed a plow, and that is
real toil. Right now I see the brown fallow hills and the great
squares of gold. But visions or thoughts of home are rare. That is
well, for they hurt like a stab. I cannot think now of a single
thing connected with my training here that I want to tell you. Yet
some things I must tell. For instance, we have different
instructors, and naturally some are more forcible than others. We
have one at whom the boys laugh. He tickles them. They like him. But
he is an ordeal for me. The reason is that in our first bayonet
practice, when we rushed and thrust a stuffed bag, he made us yell,
_"God damn you, German--die!"_ I don't imagine this to be general
practice in army exercises, but the fact is he started us that way.
I can't forget. When I begin to charge with a bayonet those words
leap silently, but terribly, to my lips. Think of this as reality,
Lenore--a sad and incomprehensible truth in 1917. All in me that is
spiritual, reasonable, all that was once hopeful, revolts at this
actuality and its meaning. But there is another side, that dark one,
which revels in anticipation. It is the cave-man in me, hiding by
night, waiting with a bludgeon to slay. I am beginning to be struck
by the gradual change in my comrades. I fancied that I alone had
suffered a retrogression. I have a deep consciousness of baseness
that is going to keep me aloof from them. I seem to be alone with my
own soul. Yet I seem to be abnormally keen to impressions. I feel
what is going on in the soldiers' minds, and it shocks me, set me
wondering, forces me to doubt myself. I keep saying it must be my
peculiar way of looking at things.

Lenore, I remember your appeal to me. Shall I ever forget your sweet
face--your sad eyes when you bade me hope in God?--I am trying, but
I do not see God yet. Perhaps that is because of my morbidness--my
limitations. Perhaps I will face him over the