losses yet: but we took about 1,300 prisoners.

I must stop now. I am very fit and a Capt., 3rd Senior Officer out
here for the moment (excluding Adjutant O.M.O.) and am commanding "A"
double Coy.

* * * * *


AMARAH.

_October_8, 1915

TO N.B.

Two lots of letters arrived this mail, including yours of August 30th
and September 6th, for which many thanks.

If I said that this war means the denying of Christianity I ought to
have explained myself more. That phrase is so often used loosely that
people don't stop to think exactly what they mean. If the Germans
deliberately brought about the war to aggrandise themselves, as I
believe they did, that was a denial of Christianity, _i.e._ a
deliberate rejection of Christian principles and disobedience to
Christ's teaching: and it makes no difference in that case that it was
a national and not an individual act. But once the initiating evil was
done, it involved the consequence, as evil always does, of leaving
other nations only a choice of evils. In this case the choice for
England was between seeing Belgium and France crushed, and war. In
choosing war I can't admit there was any denial of Christianity, and I