[CHAPTER IV]
January, 1915
January 8th. If Art be Selection, then surely is that of keeping a War Diary, that shall be true, unbiased and yet not dull, the hardest of all Arts!
For our eyes are so focused on the smaller things out here that we are apt to ignore the larger issues altogether.
Yet—even as, looking back at bygone years, it is the little things that count—the branch that taps against the study window, the sickly scent of lime trees, the odd pattern on the nursery cup, the wind across the fields, the broken doll, so is it by little things alone that we can draw true pictures of our own times.
The days have been too busy collecting "woollies" for those who need them, getting together a library for the "BX" men, writing letters for the wounded, to keep my diary.
There is much humour as well as pathos in the letters that are dictated, and hackneyed phrases, such as "Hoping this finds you as it leaves me" and "I take up the pen to tell you," recur frequently, often with ambiguous meanings.
"Dear Wife,—You will be glad to hear that I have lost an arm, but am still alive and hope to be home with you soon. Hoping this finds you as it leaves me, Yours Truly, A. S.," ran one I took down to-day.
One is reminded of the anecdote of the man who, when asked if he had ever been in love, replied: "In love? Of course, my dear sir, on many occasions, and each time with the same unswerving devotion," when, as is not infrequently the case, one man contrives to keep up an apparently parallel correspondence with that portion of the community whom he designates as his "Lidy friends," and, equally oblivious of amanuensis and censor, dispatches missives, identical in expressions of passionate devotion, to each of the respective recipients. Romance, too, ripens quickly out here, and each of the aforementioned five happy damsels who was "My dear Miss X" a week ago becomes "My darling sweetheart" to-day. One wonders what will happen to the remaining four when, in due course, the returning hero decides upon which of the unsuspecting maidens to bestow his comprehensive heart!
One day I went over to see some friends at Calais, where they are leading the same gendarme-hunted life as the Dunkirk journalist, in order to be near their Belgian fiancés. Every three days they have to change their quarters, and though it is only a fortnight ago that I received their invitation, it was only after inquiring at four hotels that I ran them to earth.
Calais is feeling very thrilled at her own importance, for the enemy are bombing her with a vigour that marks her as a foe worthy of attention.