After all my years of playing soldiers, and then of reading History, I have almost a mania to be in the East, to see fighting, and to serve.

I don't ask myself, is the life congenial to me? But, am I fitted for, am I called to, the Ministry?

I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense conciliatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

The marvel is that we did not all die of cold. As a matter of fact, only one of my party actually froze to death before he could be got back, but I am not able to tell how many have ended up in hospital. We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death.

Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly.

Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.