formula; I had divined its part in the worlds. But I had not yet
witnessed its actual practice, except in infinitely small examples. And
now at last violence was displayed before me on such a scale that my
whole faculty of receptiveness was called upon to face it. Well, it was
interesting; and I may tell you that I never relaxed from my attitude of
cool and impersonal watchfulness. What I had kept about me of my own
individuality was a certain visual perceptiveness that caused me to
register the setting of things, a setting that dramatised itself as
'artistically' as in any stage-management. During all those minutes I
never relaxed in my resolve to see 'how it was.'

I was very happy to find that the 'intoxication of slaughter' never had
any possession of me. I hope it will always be so. Unfortunately,
contact with the German race has for ever spoilt my opinion of those
people. I cannot quite succeed in quelling a sensibility and a
humanitarianism that I know to be misplaced, and that would make me the
dupe of a treacherous enemy; but I have come to tolerate things which I
had held in abomination as the very negation of life.

I have seen the French soldier fight. He is terrible in action, and
after action magnanimous. That is the phrase. It is a very common
commonplace; our greatest writers and the humblest of our schoolboys
have trotted it out alike; and now my decadent ex-intellectualism finds
nothing better to say at the sight of the soul of the Frenchman.


To Madame de L.

_March 14, 1915._