On October 6th, Donald Hankey wrote home:  “We shall probably be fighting by the time you get this letter, but one has a far better chance of getting through now than in July.  I shall be very glad if we do have a scrap, as we have been resting quite long enough.  Of course one always has to face possibilities on such occasions; but we have faced them in advance, haven’t we?  I believe with all my soul that whatever will be, will be for the best.  As I said before, I should hate to slide meanly into winter without a scrap....  I have a top-hole platoon—­nearly all young, and nearly all have been out here eighteen months—­thoroughly good sporting fellows; so if I don’t do well it will be my fault.”

Six days after this the Student knelt down for a few seconds with his men—­we have it on the testimony of one of them—­and he told them a little of what was before them:  “If wounded, ‘Blighty’; if killed, the Resurrection.”  Then “over the top.”  He was last seen alive rallying his men, who had wavered for a moment under the heavy machine gun and rifle fire.  He carried the waverers along with him, and was found that night close to the trench, the winning of which had cost him his life, with his platoon sergeant and a few of his men by his side.

What wonder that his cousin and best friend, when asked a short time previously what he was like, had replied, “He is the most beautiful thing that ever happened.”

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

(Being extracts from letters to his sister)

“I am very much wondering whether you will receive ‘A Diary’ in four parts.  It is very much founded on fact, though altered in parts.  You will probably be surprised at a certain change in tone, but remember that my previous articles were written in England, while this was written on the spot....  The Diary was not my diary, though it was so very nearly what mine might have been that it is difficult to say what is fiction and what is actuality in it.  With regard to the ‘conversation’ during the bombardment, it represents in its totality what I believe the ordinary soldier feels.  He loathes the war, and the grandiloquent speeches of politicians irritate him by their failure to realize how loathesome war is.  At the same time he knows he has got to go through with it, and only longs for the chance to hurry up.  In the ‘Diary,’ again, I quite deliberately emphasized the depression of the man who thought he was being left out, and the mental effect of the clearing-up process because I thought that it would be a good thing for people to realize this side, and also partly because I felt that in previous articles I had glossed over it too much....  If I get a chance of publishing another book I shall certainly include them.”