an extraordinary talent for collaring affection. One trusts his judgment absolutely and yet follows him with a feeling that he must be protected. Life hasn’t been very good to him; he’s not particular as to whether or no he survives the fighting! There used to be a girl in the background—Well, there’s no harm in telling. He would write ten letters to every one that he received from her. He was fearfully humble about her. “You wouldn’t expect a girl,” he used to say “to write very often to such an ugly pup as I am.” When he spoke like that he would grin self-derisively and purposely show all his gold stoppings. He went home on leave to England six months ago determined to make sure of her and to bring matters to a crisis. She met him with the news that she was going to be married to an officer whom we all knew to be a quitter. She begged him to be present at the wedding so that people might not talk. He went to the wedding and returned to the Front six days ahead of time. Since then he’s seemed to be more white and small and bow-legged than ever.     

       I’m the only man who knows what lies behind his life. We’re the best of friends and, when we’re in the line, we always sleep in the same dug-out—which occasions a certain amount of jealousy among the other officers. When we’re on the march, he has to follow the routine etiquette and share his billets with the Captain. I hate to see him go up front for fear he should die. He shares the same fear for me, and is continually inventing excuses for getting me on the wire when I’m forward. God created him a caricature—the potter’s thumb slipped in the moulding of his clay; but to make amends God gave him the heart of a lion. You love him, protect him, declare him “quaint,”       but never for a moment do you cease to admire him with a strangely simple and passionate loyalty. He’s as straight as John the Baptist; it       would be impossible to tell him a lie.     

       We have a race-horse in our battery which the Major uses as his charger—a dainty, fine-boned aristocrat of a fellow, red and lean as a rusty sword. When our little Major rides him, leading his battery down the long white roads of France, strangers halt to gaze at the almost childish figure with the short bowed legs, wondering how he ever contrived to climb up so high. At the head of his battery, where he ought to appear most imposing, he looks more like a jockey than a field-officer. It doesn’t matter what strangers wonder or what he looks like, now that 

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