the trenches has taught men to lend their bodies to each other--out of
two maimed bodies to make up one which is whole, and sound, and
shared. You saw this all the time in hospital. A man who had only one
leg would pal up with a man who had only one arm. The one-armed man
would wheel the one-legged man about the garden in a chair; at
meal-times the one-legged man would cut up the one-armed man's food
for him. They had both lost something, but by pooling what was left
they managed to own a complete body. By the time the war is ended
there'll be great hosts of helpless men who by combining will have
learnt how to become helpful. They'll establish a new standard of
very simple and cheerful socialism.

There's a point I want to make clear before I forget it. All these
men, whether they're capturing Hun dug-outs at the Front or taking
prisoner their own despair in English hospitals, are perfectly
ordinary and normal. Before the war they were shop-assistants,
cab-drivers, plumbers, lawyers, vaudeville artists. They were men of
no heroic training. Their civilian callings and their previous social
status were too various for any one to suppose that they were heroes
ready-made at birth. Something has happened to them since they marched
away in khaki--something that has changed them. They're as completely
re-made as St. Paul was after he had had his vision of the opening
heavens on the road to Damascus. They've brought their vision back
with them to civilian life, despite the lost arms and legs which they
scarcely seem to regret; their souls still triumph over the body and
the temporal. As they hobble through the streets of London, they
display the same gay courage that was theirs when at zero hour, with a
fifty-fifty chance of death, they hopped over the top for the attack.

Often at the Front I have thought of Christ's explanation of his own