LXI
France July 17, 1918
To-night brought a great wad of American papers. What a time America is having—all shouting and anticipation of glory without any suspicion of the cost. War's fine when it's khaki and drums on Fifth Avenue—if it wasn't tortured bodies, broken hearts, and blinded eyes. Where I am the dead lie thick beneath the sod; poppies pour like blood across the landscape, and cornflowers stand tall in sockets empty of eyes. The inscription “Unknown Soldier” is written on many crosses that grow like weeds from the shell-holes. All the feet that marched away with shouting now lie silent; their owners have even lost their names. Could death do more? Where I live at present everything is blasted, stagnant, decayed, morose. War's a fine spectacle for those who only cheer from the pavement.
It isn't that I'm angry with people for seizing life and being gay. We're gay out here—but we've earned the right. Many of us are happier than we ever were in our lives. Why not? For the first time we're quite sure every minute of the day that we're doing right. And that certainty is the only excuse for being happy while the Front line is suffering the tortures of the damned.
I came down this morning from doing forward work; it had been raining in torrents and the trenches were awash. I sleep to-night at the battery and to-morrow I go forward again. It's really great fun forward when it's fine. All day you watch the Hun country for signs of movement and snipe his support-trenches and back-country. Far away on the horizon you watch plumes of smoke trail from the chimneys of his towns, and try to guess his intentions and plans. War's the greatest game of the intellect yet invented; very little of its success to-day is due to brute strength.
It's night now. I'm sitting in my shirt-sleeves, writing by the light of a candle in an empty bottle. A row is going on outside as of “armed men falling downstairs,” to borrow Stevenson's phrase. It's really more like a dozen celestial cats with kettles tied to their tails. I wonder what God thinks of it all; of all the kings, He alone is silent and takes no sides, notwithstanding the Kaiser's “Me und Gott.”
My jolly little major has just looked up to suggest that the war won't be ended until all the world is under arms. He's an optimist.