We have the dragoons still with us.  They don’t interest me hugely—­not as the English did when they retreated here last September, nor as the French infantry did on their way to the battlefield.  These men have never been in action yet.  Still they lend a picturesqueness to the countryside, though to me it is, as so much of the war has been, too much like the decor of a drama.  Every morning they ride by the gate, two abreast, to exercise their lovely horses, and just before noon they come back.  All the afternoon they are passing in groups, smoking, chatting, and laughing, and, except for their uniforms, they do not suggest war, of which they actually know as little as I do.

After dinner, in the twilight, for the days are getting long, and the moon is full, I sit on the lawn and listen to them singing in the street at Voisins, and they sing wonderfully well, and they sing good music.  The other evening they sang choruses from “Louise” and “Faust,” and a wonderful baritone sang “Vision Fugitive.”  The air was so still and clear that I hardly missed a note.

A week ago tonight we were aroused late in the evening, it must have been nearly midnight, by an alerte announcing the passing of a Zeppelin.  I got up and went out-of-doors, but neither heard nor saw anything, except a bicycle going over the hill, and a voice calling “Lights out.”  Evidently it did not get to Paris, as the papers have been absolutely dumb.

One thing I have done this week.  When the war began I bought, as did nearly everyone else, a big map of Germany and the battle-fronts surrounding it, and little envelopes of tiny British, Belgian, French, Montenegrin, Servian, Russian, German, and Austrian flags, mounted on pins.  Every day, until the end of last week, I used to put the flags in place as well as I could after studying the day’s communique.

I began to get discouraged in the hard days of last month, when day after day I was obliged to retreat the Allied flags on the frontier, and when the Russian offensive fell down, I simply tore the map off the wall, and burned it, flags and all.

Of course I said to myself, in the spirit I have caught from the army, “All these things are but incidents, and will have no effect on the final result.  A nation is not defeated while its army is still standing up in its boots, so it is folly to bother over details.”

Do you ever wonder what the poets of the future will do with this war?  Is it too stupendous for them, or, when they get it in perspective, can they find the inspiration for words where now we have only tightened throats and a great pride that, in an age set down as commercial, such deeds of heroism could be?