... If you could only see the confidence of the
little forest animals, such as the field-mice! They were as pretty as
a Japanese print, with the inside of their ears like a rosy shell....
How is it possible to think of Schumann as a barbarian?... I am happy
to have felt myself responsive to all these blows, and my hope lies in
the thought that they will have forged my soul.... Spinoza is a most
valuable aid in the trenches.... We are in billets after the great
battle, and this time I saw it all. I did my duty; I knew that by the
feeling of my men for me. But the best are dead. We gained our object
... I send you my whole love. Whatever comes to pass, life has had its
beauty." And then no more.
* * * * *
If Mr. HAROLD LAKE'S account of the British forces in Macedonia is
supposed to supply an answer to a not unnatural query as to what they
are doing there, I am afraid one must take it that in fact they are
doing nothing in particular. An intelligent British public believes
that at least they are immobilising important enemy forces and perhaps
accomplishing several other useful things as well, but the writer, who
has actually been _In Salonica with Our Army_ (MELROSE), frankly lays
aside high considerations of policy and, seeing it all in desperately
foreshortened perspective, knows only that he and his fellows,
having volunteered to fight, are being called on instead to endure
a purgatorial routine of dust and dulness, mosquitoes, malaria and
night marches, and the grilling away of useless days in the society of
flies and lizards, with only, as a very occasional treat, the smallest
glimpse of anything resembling a Front.
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