Item 04: G. O. Hawkins letters to his family, 2 January 1915-November 1917 - Page 66
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[Page 66]
2
piegonholed applications of a poor sapper who is thereby forced to drag on a painful existence in utterly distasteful and most unlovely surroundings. The worst feature of which is the wearingly mental squalor of filthy humanity
Do you know, can you picture to yourself how life would be with you if you were prisoned in with a pack of hounds each of which is joyously happy and sufficiently [indecipherable] and kindly in its own way towards its fellows while it is gobbling filth one minute, disgorging it the next and then licking it up a second time.
Perhaps with such a picture before you it will be possible to understand my position mentally
Of course it makes no difference to my [indecipherable] and has no debasing effect upon my reason
This very fact makes it all the more unbearable and repulsive
The best way to express my life at present is to say I am merely a lonely existence where human surrounding are a continual insult.
I am willing to admit that I would gladly put up with greater [indecipherable] and darker [indecipherable] if manners expressions and thoughts were only polite. If things around me were beautiful, if, in short, the sinners were gentlemen.