==

You must not be anxious about my not coming back. The chances are
about ten to one that I will. But if I should not, you must be proud,

like a Spartan mother, and feel that it is your contribution
to the triumph of the cause whose righteousness you feel so keenly.

Everybody should take part in this struggle which is to have
so decisive an effect, not only on the nations engaged but on all humanity.

There should be no neutrals, but everyone should bear some part of the burden.
If so large a part should fall to your share, you would be in so far

superior to other women and should be correspondingly proud.
There would be nothing to regret, for I could not have done otherwise

than I did, and I think I could not have done better.
Death is nothing terrible after all. It may mean something

even more wonderful than life. It cannot possibly mean anything worse
to the good soldier.

==
The same note recurs in a letter of two weeks later (July 3):

==
Whether I am on the winning or losing side is not the point with me:

it is being on the side where my sympathies lie that matters,
and I am ready to see it through to the end. Success in life

means doing that thing than which nothing else conceivable
seems more noble or satisfying or remunerative, and this enviable state

I can truly say that I enjoy, for had I the choice I would be
nowhere else in the world than where I am.

==
In this letter he says that an article about Rupert Brooke

in which his name was mentioned "gave him rather more pain than pleasure,
for it rubbed in the matter which most rankled in his heart,

that he never could get his book of poems published before the war."
However he consoles himself with the reflection that the M.S.

is probably as safe at Bruges as anywhere else. "We have finished
our eighth month on the firing line," he says, "and rumors are going round

of an imminent return to the rear for reorganization."
These rumors proved to be well founded, and on July 17,

he wrote on a picture-postcard representing the Lion of Belfort:
==

We have finally come to the rear for a little rest and reorganization,
and are cantoned in a valley not far from Belfort, in the extreme east

of France, very near the Swiss frontier. Since I wrote you last,
all the Americans in the regiment received 48 hours permission in Paris,

and it was a great happiness to get back even for so short a while
and to see again old scenes and faces after almost a year's absence.

We shall be here several weeks perhaps.
==

Three weeks later (August 8) he wrote to his mother:
==

. . . I have always had the passion to play the biggest part within my reach,
and it is really in a sense a supreme success to be allowed to play this.

If I do not come out, I will share the good fortune of those who disappear
at the pinnacle of their careers. Come to love France and understand

the almost unexampled nobility of the effort this admirable people is making,
for that will be the surest way of your finding comfort

for anything that I am ready to suffer in their cause.
==

The spell of rest lasted some two months, and then the Legion
returned to the front in time for the battle in Champagne

"in which" he writes "we took part from the beginning,
the morning of the memorable 25th. September." I cannot resist

quoting at some length from the admirably vivid letter
in which he gave an account of this experience:

==
The part we played in the battle is briefly as follows.

We broke camp about 11 o'clock the night of the 24th, and marched up
through ruined Souain to our place in one of the numerous `boyaux'

where the `troupes d'attaque' were massed. The cannonade was pretty violent
all that night, as it had been for several days previous, but toward dawn

it reached an intensity unimaginable to anyone who has not seen
a modern battle. A little before 9.15 the fire lessened suddenly,

and the crackle of the fusillade between the reports of the cannon
told us that the first wave of assault had left and the attack begun.

At the same time we received the order to advance. The German artillery
had now begun to open upon us in earnest. Amid the most infernal roar of

every kind of fire-arms, and through an atmosphere heavy with dust and smoke,
we marched up through the `boyaux' to the `tranchees de depart'.

At shallow places and over breaches that shells had made in the bank,
we caught momentary glimpses of the blue lines sweeping up the hillside

or silhouetted on the crest where they poured into the German trenches.
When the last wave of the Colonial brigade had left, we followed.

`Bayonette au canon', in lines of `tirailleurs', we crossed
the open space between the lines, over the barbed wire,

where not so many of our men were lying as I had feared,
(thanks to the efficacy of the bombardment) and over the German trench,

knocked to pieces and filled with their dead. In some places
they still resisted in isolated groups. Opposite us, all was over,

and the herds of prisoners were being already led down as we went up.
We cheered, more in triumph than in hate; but the poor devils,

terror-stricken, held up their hands, begged for their lives,
cried "Kamerad", "Bon Francais", even "Vive la France".

We advanced and lay down in columns by twos behind the second crest.
Meanwhile, bridges had been thrown across trenches and `boyaux',

and the artillery, leaving the emplacements where they had been
anchored a whole year, came across and took position in the open,

a magnificentspectacle. Squadrons of cavalry came up.
Suddenly the long, unpicturesque `guerre de tranchees' was at an end,

and the field really presented the aspect of the familiar battle pictures, --
the battalions in manoeuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent to danger,

galloping about on their chargers. But now the German guns, moved back,
began to get our range, and the shells to burst over and around

batteries and troops, many with admirableprecision. Here my best comrade
was struck down by shrapnel at my side, -- painfully but not mortally wounded.

I often envied him after that. For now our advanced troops
were in contact with the German second-line defenses,

and these proved to be of a character so formidable
that all further advance without a preliminaryartillery preparation

was out of the question. And our role, that of troops in reserve,
was to lie passive in an open field under a shell fire that every hour

became more terrific, while aeroplanes and captive balloons,
to which we were entirely exposed, regulated the fire.

That night we spent in the rain. With portable picks and shovels
each man dug himself in as well as possible. The next day

our concentrated artillery again began the bombardment,
and again the fusillade announced the entrance of the infantry into action.

But this time only the wounded appeared coming back, no prisoners.
I went out and gave water to one of these, eager to get news.

It was a young soldier, wounded in the hand. His face and voice
bespoke the emotion of the experience he had been through,

in a way that I will never forget. "Ah, les salauds!" he cried,
"They let us come right up to the barbed wire without firing. Then a hail

of grenades and balls. My comrade fell, shot through the leg, got up,
and the next moment had his head taken off by a grenade before my eyes."

"And the barbed wire, wasn't it cut down by the bombardment?"
"Not at all in front of us." I congratulated him on having

a `blessure heureuse' and being well out of the affair.
But he thought only of his comrade and went on down the road toward Souain

nursing his mangled hand, with the stream of wounded
seeking their `postes de secours'.

==
He then tells how, in spite of substantial gains, it gradually

"became more and more evident that the German second line of defence
presented obstacles too serious to attempt overcoming for the moment,

and we began going up at night to work at consolidating our advancedtrenches
and turning them into a new permanent line." To this time, perhaps,

belongs the incidentrelated by Rif Baer, an Egyptian,
who was his comrade and best friend in the regiment.