battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent outbreaks of
energy which rage and pass and are expressly designed to bewilder. It is
not for the poor wounded to oblige us by making us showy, but for us to
let them count on our open arms and open lap as troubled children count
on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our
opportunity of service threatens inordinately to grow; such things may
any day begin to occur at the front as will make what we have up to now
been able to do mere child's play, though some of our help has been
rendered when casualties were occurring at the rate, say, of 5,000 in
twenty minutes, which ought, on the whole, to satisfy us. In face of
such enormous facts of destruction--"

Here Mr. James broke off as if these facts were, in their horror, too
many and too much for him. But after another moment he explained his
pause.

"One finds it in the midst of all this as hard to apply one's words as
to endure one's thoughts. The war has used up words; they have weakened,
they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of
other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the
happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages
before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms,
or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of
limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to
walk."

This sounded rather desperate, yet the incorrigible interviewer,
conscious of the wane of his only chance, ventured to glance at the
possibility of a word or two on the subject of Mr. James's present
literary intentions. But the kindly hand here again was raised, and the