“Man that is born of a woman—­” Monty was saying, and, as the words fell, the bearers raised with ropes the corpse from off its stretcher, and began to lower it into the grave.

“Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust—­” At this point the kindly French and British onlookers and the tall brown Sikh picked up their handfuls of earth, and threw them upon the body as their compliment to the dead.

The sight of Jimmy going down into his grave on the lengthening ropes started in me a real grief, and, when the strangers paid their simple respect to the unknown dead, I felt momentarily stricken, and shivered with pride that I had known him whom they thus honoured.  But all this passed away, and left a dull indifference.  The war was fast teaching me its petrifying lesson—­to be incapable of horror.  I tried to recover my sorrow, thinking that I ought to do so, but I could feel no emotion at all.  “This sort of thing,” ran my thoughts, “seems to be the order of the day for the generation in which we were born.  It’s all very fine, or all very unfair.  I don’t know.  The old Colonel and Monty said it was very glorious, so no doubt it must be.  But, whatever it is, we’re all in it.  Poor old Jimmy.”

So I fell into a mood that was partly the resignation of perplexity, partly a sulkiness with fate.  With the same blunted mind, perceiving no pain, I watched the Greek diggers, at the end of the service, as they began to shovel the earth on to my friend’s body.  First they tossed it so that it fell in a little pile on his breast; then they threw it, dust and clods, over his feet, till at last only the head, hooded in its blanket, was uncovered.  They turned their attention to that, and the earth fell heavily on Jimmy Doon’s face.  I turned unfeelingly away.

Poor Jimmy, a mere super in the Gallipoli drama, had played his trifling part on the stage, and was now sleeping in the Green Room.

Was it all very fine, or all very unfair?  In my tent that evening I worried the problem out.  At first it seemed only sordid that James Doon should have his gracious body returned by that foul Peninsula, like some empty crate for which it had no further use, to be buried without firing party, drums or bugles.  But every now and then I caught a glimpse of my mistake.  I was thinking in terms of matter instead of in terms of spiritual realities.  I must try to get the poetic gift of the old Colonel and Monty, whose thoughts did not prison themselves in flesh but travelled easily in the upper air of abstract ideals like glory and beauty and truth.  But it was difficult.  Only in my exalted moments could I breathe in that high air.

And I could not climb to-night.  Perhaps if they had but sounded the “Last Post” at Jimmy’s burial, I should have lost sight of its grossness and caught the vision of its glory.  I was wondering if this would have unveiled the hidden beauty, when, very strangely, the bugles in all the camps rang out with the great call.  It was dark, and they were sounding the “Last Post” over the close of the day’s work.  But for those who preferred to think so, it was blown over the day’s dead.