Christmas Eve at Tiflis, and here we are with cars still stuck in the ice thirty miles from Archangel, and ourselves just holding on and trying not to worry. But what a waste of time! Also, fighting is going on now in Persia, and we might be a lot of use. We came back from Batoum in the hottest and slowest train I have ever been in. Still, Georgia delighted me, and I am glad to have seen it. They have a curious custom there (the result of generations of fighting). Instead of saying "Good-morning," they say "Victory"; and the answer is, "May the victory be yours." The language is Georgian, of course; and then there is Tartar, and Polish, and Russian, and I can't help thinking that the Tower of Babel was the poorest joke that was ever played on mankind. Nothing stops work so completely.
What will Christmas Day be like at home? I think of all the village churches, with the holly and evergreens, and in almost every one the little new brass plates to the memory of beautiful youth, dead and mangled, and left in the mud to await another trumpet than that which called it from the trenches. There is nothing like a boy, and all the life of England and the prayers of mothers have centred round them. One's older friends died first, and now the boys are falling, and from every little vicarage, from school-houses and colleges, the endless stream goes, all with their heads up, fussing over their little bits of packing, and then away to stand exploding shells and gas and bombs. No one except those who have seen knows the ghastly tale of human suffering that this war involves every day. Down here 550,000 Armenians have been butchered in cold blood. The women are either massacred or driven into Turkish harems.
Yesterday we heard some news at last in this most benighted corner of the world! England has raised four million volunteers. Hurrah! Over one million men volunteered in one week. French takes command at home and Haig at the front.
To Mrs. Charles Young.
Hotel Orient, Tiflis,
26 December.
Darling J.,
It seems almost useless to write letters, or even to wire! Letters sometimes take forty-nine days to get to England, and telegrams are always kept a fortnight before being sent. We have had great difficulty about the ambulance cars, as they all got frozen into the river at Archangel; however, as you will see from the newspapers, there isn't a great deal going on yet.
I do hope you and all the family are safe and sound. I wired to —— for her birthday to ask news of you all, and I prepaid the reply, but, of course, none came, so I am sure she never got the wire. I have wired twice to ——, but no reply. At last one gives up expecting any. I got some newspapers nearly a month old to-day, and I have been devouring them.