Germany is absolutely right in considering Great Britain her greatest enemy.  She knows today that, even if she could get to Paris or Petrograd, it would not help her.  She would still have Britain to settle with.  I wonder if the Kaiser has yet waked up to a realization of his one very great achievement—­the reawakening of Greater Britain?  He dreamed of dealing his mother’s country a mortal blow.

The blow landed, but it healed instead of killing.

This war is infernal, diabolical—­and farcical—­if we look at the deeds that are done every day.  Luckily we don’t and mustn’t, for we all know that there are things in the world a million times worse than death, and that there are future results to be aimed at which make death gloriously worth while.  Those are the things we must look at.

I have always told you that I did not find the balance of things much changed, and I don’t.  I am afraid that you cannot cultivate, civilize, humanize—­choose your word—­man to such a point that, so long as he is not emasculated, his final argument in the cause of honor and justice will not be his fists—­with or without a weapon in them—­which is equivalent to saying, I am afraid, that so long as there are two men on earth there will always be the chance of a fight.

Thus far February has been a droll month.  I have seen Februaries in France which have been spring-like, with the chestnut trees in bud, and the primroses in flower, and lilacs in leaf.  This February has been a strange mixture of spring awkwardly slipping out of the lap of winter and climbing back again.  There have been days when the sun was so warm that I could drive without a rug, and found furs a burden; there have been wonderful moonlit nights; but the most of the time, so far, it has been nasty.  On warm days flowers began to sprout and the buds on the fruit-trees to swell.  That made Pere sigh and talk about the lune rousse.  We have had days of wind and rain which be-longed in a correct March.  I am beginning to realize that the life of a farmer is a life of anxiety.  If I can take Pere’s word for it, it is always cold when it should not be; the hot wave never arrives at the right moment; when it should be dry it rains; and when the earth needs water the rain refuses to fall.  In fact, on his testimony, I am convinced that the weather is never just right, except to the mere lover of nature, who has nothing to lose and nothing to gain by its caprices.

The strange thing is that we all stand it so well.  If anyone had told me that I could have put up with the life I have been living for two winters and be none the worse for it, I should have thought him heartless.  Yet, like the army, I am surely none the worse for it, and, in the army, many of the men are better for it.  The youngsters who come home on leave are as rugged as possible.  They have straightened up and broadened their chests.  Even the middle-aged are stronger.  There is a man here who is a master