I was in Paris when the Huns were overhead, and saw one of them come down. The calmness of the people was amazing. There was no dashing for the Métro or other funk holes; only a contemptuous cheeriness. The French are great.
XXX
London
February 18, 1918
To-day I have made a start on my book Out to Win, and miss you very much. It's quite a difficult thing, I find, to really concentrate on literary work in a strange environment. I wish I could take a magic powder and find myself back in my own little study, with my own little family, till the book is written.
Heaps of people I met in France were returning to America, and promised to telephone you to say they had seen me.
I stumbled across a most inspiring conversation which I overheard the other day, and which, if I had time, I would work into a story, entitled “His Bit.”
I was sitting in front of two women on a bus.
“Well,” said one, “when they told me that Phil was married, you could 'ave knocked me darn wiv a feather.”
It transpired that Phil was a C3 class man, no good for active service. He had met a girl, turned out into the streets by her parents because she was about to have a child by a soldier now dead, whom she had not married. Phil, without asking her any questions, did his “bit”—led her off and married her right away because he was sorry for her.