A captain was heard saying to a gunner subaltern:  “We must go back and get that gun.”  The subaltern said, “We shall be killed, but it doesn’t matter.”  The captain echoed heavily, “No, it doesn’t matter,” and they went back.

Sir William Ramsay, speaking about the war, says that half the adult male population of Europe will be killed before it is over.  Those who are left will be the feeble ones, the slackers, the unfit, and the cowards.  It is good to be left to breed from such stock!

It is odd to me how confusing is the want of difference that has come to pass between the living and the not living.  Cottages and little towns seem to be part of nature.  One regrets their destruction almost as one regrets the loss of life.  They have a tragic look, with their dishevelled windows and stripped roofs and skeleton frames.  Life has become so cheap that cottages seem almost as valuable.  “It doesn’t matter”—­nothing matters.  I rather dread going back to London, because there things may begin to seem important and one will be in bondage again.  Here our men are going to their death laughing because it doesn’t matter.

There is a proud humility about my countrymen which few people have yet realised.  It is the outcome of nursery days and public schools.  No one is allowed to think much of himself in either place, so when he dies, “It doesn’t matter.”

God help the boys!  If they only knew how much it mattered to us!  Life is over for them.  We don’t even know for certain that they will live again.  But their spirit, as I know it, can never die.  I am not sure about the survival of personality.  I care, but I do not know.  But I do know that by these simple, glorious, uncomplaining deaths, some higher, purer, more splendid place is reached, some release is found from the heavy weight of foolish, sticky, burdensome, contemptible things.  These heroes do “rise,” and we “rise” with them.  Could Christ himself desire a better resurrection?

[Page Heading:  LARKS]

28 May.—­I am busy getting things prepared for going home—­my lecture, two articles, etc.  I did not go to the station to-day, but worked till 3 o’clock, and then walked over to St. Idesbald.  How I wish I could have been out-of-doors more since I came here.  It is such a wonderful country, all sky.  No wonder there are painters in Belgium.  During the winter it was too wet to see much, and I was always in the kitchen, but now I could kiss the very ground with the little roses on it amongst the Dunes.  Larks sing at St. Idesbald, and nightingales.  Some fine night I mean to walk out there and listen.

29 May.—­To-day, according to promise, Mr. Bevan took me into Nieuport.  It was very difficult to get permission to go there, but Mr. Bevan got it from the British Mission on the plea that I was going to give lectures at home.

“The worst of going to Nieuport,” said Major Tyrell, “is that you won’t be likely to see home again.”