I have received a most beautiful letter from André, who must be a
neighbour of mine out here. He thinks as I do about our dreadful war
literature. What does flourish is a faculty of musical improvisation.
All last night I heard the loveliest symphonies, fully orchestral; and I
am bound to say that they owed their best to the great music that is
Germany's.

After my experiences I must really let myself go a little in the
pleasure of this furtive sun of March.


_March 5_ (6th day in billets).

I wish I could recover in myself the extreme sensibilities I felt before
the fiery trial, so that I might describe for you the colours and the
aspects of the drama we have passed through. But just now I am in a
state of numbness, pleasant enough in itself, yet apt to hinder my
vision of things present and my forecasts of things to come. I have to
make an effort to keep hold of eternal and essential things; perhaps I
shall succeed in time.

And yet certain sights on the wasted field of war had so noble a lesson,
a teaching so persuasive, that I should love to share with you the great
certainties of those days. How harmonious is death within the natural
soil, how admirable is the manner of man's return to the substance of
his mother earth, compared with the poverty of funeral ceremonial!
Yesterday I thought of those poor dead as forsaken things. But I had
been present at the burial of an officer, and it seems to me that Nature
is more compassionate than man. Yes indeed, the soldier's death is close
to natural things. It is a frank horror, a horror that does not attempt