I got your first letter about one day's march south of Mons.

Best love, dearest M------. Write again.


Isn't that a calm way to state such a trying experience as that retreat?
It is only a sample of a soldier's letter.

If he were disappointed you can imagine that I was. Luckily I had
seen him in June, when he was here on a visit, having just returned
from North Nigeria, after five years in the civil service, to take up his
grade in the army, little dreaming there was to be a war at once.

If he had come that afternoon imagine what I should have felt to see
him ride down by the picket at the gate. He would have found me
pouring tea for Captain Edwards of the Bedfords. It would have surely
added a touch of reality to the battle of the next days. Of course I
knew he was somewhere out there, but to have seen him actually
riding away to it would have been different. Yet it might not, for I am
sure his conversation would have been as calm as his letters, and
they read as much as if he were taking an exciting pleasure trip, with
interesting risks thrown in, as anything else. That is so English. On
some future day I suppose we shall sit together on the lawn--he will
probably lie on it--and swap wonderful stories, for I am going to be
one of the veterans of this war.

I must own that when I read the letter I found it suggestive of the days
that are gone. Imagine marching through Malplaquet and over all that
West Flanders country with its memories of Marlborough, and where,
had the Dutch left the Duke a free hand, he would have marched on