Our Mess was a great centre for visitors, both English and Italian, we being at this time the British Battery in the most advanced and interesting position.  Among our visitors, especially on Sundays, was a Chaplain, whom I will call Littleton, who used to conduct our Church Parades.  In the British Army, and I believe in most others, the principle of compulsory religious observance is still intermittently enforced, when it does not interfere with the still more important business of fighting.  I liked Littleton very much in many ways, but sometimes he infuriated me.  He was lunching with us one day and describing how for some months in France, during some murderous fighting, he was attached to an Infantry Battalion.  “I have never in my life enjoyed myself more,” he said, “than during those months.”  I could not help asking, “What did you enjoy, seeing the poor devils getting hit?” I told him afterwards that I knew he did not really delight in spectacles of agony and bloodshed, but that “enjoy” seemed to me an unfortunate word to use.

On another occasion I attended, in the capacity of Orderly Officer for the day, one of Littleton’s Church Parades and heard him preach.  It was clear that he was troubled by a suspicion that the war and the details of its development had discredited in some minds some of the ideas of which he was the professional exponent.  He made a brave struggle, however, against this tide of unreason.  “God does not make things too easy for us,” he explained, “He gives us the opportunities, and if we choose not to use them, that is our fault.  A loving father sets up a tremendously high standard for his son, and judges him severely, not in spite of, but because of, his love for him.  In God’s sight, three or four years of war may be tremendously worth while.”

Then we sang a hymn.  I felt inclined to sing instead a song, written by a soldier who was wounded in France:—­

   “The Bishop tells us, ’when the boys come back
   They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought
   In a just cause:  they led the last attack
   On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought
   New right to breed an honourable race. 
   They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.’ 
   ‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply. 
   For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;
   Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;
   And Bert’s gone syphilitic; you’ll not find
   A chap who served there hasn’t found some change.’ 
   And the Bishop said ’The ways of God are strange!”

It was hard for such a limited intelligence as mine, especially in this unending Italian sunshine, to imagine that it could seriously be worth while to burn down a whole real world, in order to roast a probably imaginary pig.  I found it very hard to believe, with the Chaplains, that the war was purifying everyone’s character, and I was particularly sceptical as regards some of the elderly non-combatants who were unable to realise at first hand “the Glory of the Great Adventure.”