felt if we are to understand how little the general harmony is disturbed
by that which intolerably assails our emotions.

We must feel that all human uprooting is only a little thing, and what
is truly ourselves is the life of the soul.


_December 14_ (splendid weather,
with all the calm returned).

We are still here in the region of the first line, but in a place where
we can lift our heads and behold the charm of my Meusian hills, clearing
in the delicate weather.

Above the village and the orchards I see the lines of birches and firs.
Some have their skeletons coloured with a diaphanous violet marked with
white. Others build up the horizon with stronger lines.

I have been strengthened by the splendid lesson given me by a beautiful
tree during a march. Ah, dear mother, we may all disappear and Nature
will remain, and the gift I had from her of a moment of herself is
enough to justify a whole existence. That tree was like a soldier.

You would not believe how much harm has been done to the forests about
here: it is not so much the machine-guns as the frightful amount of
cutting necessary for making our shelters and for our fuel. Ah well, in
the midst of this devastation something told me that there will always
be beauty, in man and in tree.

For man also gives this lesson, though in him it is less easily