They were landed at the port of Savonna. The Italians were extraordinarily kind to them, furnishing them with food and wine and clothing of every kind. He enclosed some snapshots—one actually taken of the sinking ship. There will be people, I am sure, ready with the camera on the Judgment Day. One of these snapshots depicts Himself in his riding breeches and leggings and an Italian military cloak, which makes him look like a bandit.
He lost everything except that which he happened to have on at the moment. All the lovely new Eastern kit, to say nothing of his photographs, letters, and dear intimate possessions, are at the bottom of the sea.
Nothing matters except that he is safe. He has no idea what will happen to him now—he supposes they will just have to wait for another ship. Meanwhile he is getting a little respite from the Spartan rigours of one of the worst cantonments he has ever struck, by being a voluntary patient in a hospital.
What he says about that is very amusing. He has been accustomed to boss a hospital, and now he is being very effectively and vigorously bossed. I fear he is not chastened yet, but only rebellious.
I can smile at it all because my heart is lightened of its load. God means him to come back to me, or he would have gone down in the Mediterranean.
It is odd how in this war, you have convictions about this one and that; the sort of presentiment who will get safely through, and who will never come back. But they are not always true. I felt so sure about Dick, of whom I wrote in my last letter. I felt that his kind, the very highest type of fearless soldier and a fine Christian gentleman, was so much needed here, that God would care for him specially. When one thinks of how many like him lie on the blood-soaked fields, one is staggered, and uncertain about the future of the race.
But we must leave it, leave it all and just hold blindly on. It has gotten clear beyond us. It is so big and awful, we can just not grasp it at all.
I am now a little like a Jack of all trades, master of none. Food is beginning to be spelled with a very large capital and they tell me I must talk about food. I went to Scotland for that purpose and to speak at a great meeting in Glasgow Cathedral to commemorate on the 4th of August those who had fallen in the war.
It is the first time a woman has ever lifted up her voice in the Cathedral, and the occasion caused some searching of heart. The noble edifice was absolutely packed and directly I got up, standing at a specially selected spot in the Nave, I forgot everything but the faces in front, the great sorrowing heart of my own country and its bitter need. She is a very little country, but none have more nobly done their bit. Do you know, Cornelia, that there are villages in the north and west of Scotland where the young men are all wiped out—where there is no link between one generation and another except the babies in arms. There are no sons left, no husbands for the girls. It was with these things my heart broke as I tried to speak.
Nowhere is there any grudging or holding back. At the overflow meeting that had to be held in an adjoining church a woman came up at the close, a little plain country woman in mourning with a bag on her arm. From it she took three photographs of soldiers in Highland dress and a war office telegram which she laid against one of the lads. "That came yesterday," she said. "It's Jamie—he's the last——"