I see them now. My imagination is to an extent crushed by the
stupendousness of reality. I think I am changed in some stern spiritual
way--stripped of flabbiness. I am perhaps harder--I can't say. That I
should be a novelist seems unreasonable--it's so long since I had my own
way in the world and met any one on artistic terms. But I have enough
ego left to be very interested in my book. And by the way, when we're
out at the front and the battery wants us to come in they simply phone
up the password, "Slaves of Freedom," the meaning of which we all
understand.

You are ever in my thoughts, and I pray the day may not be far distant
when we meet again.

CON.




XXIII

October 27th, 1916.

Dearest Family:

All to-day I've been busy registering our guns. There is little chance
of rest--one would suppose that we intended to end the war by spring.

Two new officers joined our battery from England, which makes the work
lighter. One of them brings the news that D., one of the two officers
who crossed over from England with me and wandered through France with