Revs. Peel, Gooderham and Beresford, D.S.O. 241 



trench before anyone could save him. He ran about, jumping and 

 shouting, until he fell riddled by the machine-guns that had been 

 sweeping up and down in the hopes of catching unwary heads. 



" Just before that I had to tell off an orderly to look after a 

 man whose hand had been shot off, who was trying to do just 

 the same thing. 



" It must be impossible for you to realise how people can lose 

 their control like this, but that is because you cannot go by the 

 standards of human experience that held before the war. 



" These things are quite beyond human experience of 

 yesterday. 



" It is an extraordinary sensation to feel your reason totter- 

 ing and your self-control slipping. It is a real, almost physical, 

 sensation. You feel it slipping as plainly as the first quickening 

 glide on a switchback at Earl's Court, and the effort to hold on 

 is as real as gripping the sides of the car as it plunges forward. 



" I think everyone has had to build up a dual personality. 

 For instance, take the universal phenomena out here of the man 

 who at home would certainly not have made a hearty meal had 

 it been served to him in a well-stocked mortuary, but because 

 you see him now eating jam and biscuit amid appalling human 

 wreckage, it does not mean that he has been brutalised ; on the 

 contrary, he is now, and for always, a far sadder man with a 

 vaster capacity for human pity than he ever knew before. 



" A prolonged bombardment has a great physical effect, too. 

 Your hands become slow and stiff as if they were very cold, and 

 you become slow and stupid. If you see two or three men 

 having a meal together afterwards you notice this at once." 



Think what all this must be to the gentle heart and mind of 

 a man who could, for instance, write the following lines to one 

 he loved when in those ghastly trenches surrounded with 

 unutterable things. 



I love thee as I love the holiest things, 



Like perfect poetry and angels' wings, 



And cleanliness and sacred motherhood, 



And all things simple, sweetly pure and good, 



I love thee as I love a little child, 



And calves and kittens, and all things soft and mild, 



Things that I want to cuddle and to kiss 



And stroke and play with, dear ! I love you Hke this. 



And best of all I love thee as a friend, 



A fellow-seeker of a mutual end. 



R 



