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[Page 37]
Oct. 8
All day long the youth of the world, with minds strung to breaking point march to the line; their eyes seeing skeleton ruins, gaping holes, and sudden showers of high flung earth and bricks – on happily just the man in front of him. All day long the Artillery are drawing to their guns long lines of mule teams laden with sudden compacted deaths, and all day long the unladen mules go back, save those the shell struck.
And all along the road the old men sweep and clear – fill in and stamp hard the new torn hole – move aside the dead horse team,and the splintered limber or wagon.
The youth of the world winds up and down the road, to and fro through the low valleys, climb carefully the low ridge, and die suddenly – slowly, or comes back elated or dull'd.
The roads are full of the beauty of the world, and the terrible horror of war.
36.
Metcalf to Artillery Details – our man sent there in July just after Bobby Aspinall was killed, wounded the day before yesterday.
One of the A.S.C. horses here caught a piece of shrapnel in his left eye, so I acted the Vet.
37. Oct. 8
This pay I'll have to let the T.B.C. have at least 30 Francs, and I'd looked to sending to Barkers for James Stephen's "The Crock of Gold".
Murph and Ray have gone up and relieved Les and Buckholz from the advance post. Frizzle seems by report to be badly knocked – an abdominal, while Kirkwood is remaining on duty. Mac's physical state remains shrouded in mystery.
Mail not in yet, expecting the October number of "To-Day".
Later
Mail, a letter from the T.B.C., Oct. 3, Alan Seeger Diary and letters, Poems of Ledwidge, and Drinkwater's Prose Papers not yet out of the publishers hands, but on publication they will be forwarded. They also regret their inability to find "More Works of Max Beerbohm".
And a paper, "The Sunday Pictorial", Oct. 7. Over page I have gumm'd a map from their news page. This appears there under the title of 'England in the War' – 'The Burden of the Sacrifice.'
'Reuters Agency is enabled to quote some later figures as to the proportion of English troops participating in the war, the publication of which is necessary in view of continued German propaganda that troops from other parts of the Empire are being made to bear more than their share of the fighting.'