I fear I could not think of anything very helpful to reply.

“They are rather swish,” I murmured.

CHAPTER XIII

“LIVE DEEP, AND LET THE LESSER THINGS LIVE LONG”

Sec.1

One thing I shall always believe, and it is that Doe found on the Peninsula that intense life, that life of multiplied sensations, which he always craved in the days when he said:  “I want to have lived.”

You would understand what I mean if you could have seen this Brigade Bombing Officer of ours hurling his bombs at a gentleman whom he called “the jolly old Turk.”  Generally he threw them with a jest on his lips.  “One hundred and two.  One hundred and three,” he would say.  “Over she goes, and thank the Lord I’m not in the opposite trench.  BANG!  I told you so.  Stretcher-bearers for the Turks, please.”  Or he would hurl the bomb high into the air, so that it burst above the enemy like a rocket or a star-shell.  He would blow a long whistle, as it shot skyward, and say “PLONK!” as it exploded into a shower of splinters.

For Doe was young and effervescing with life.  He enjoyed himself, and his bombers enjoyed him as their officer.  Everybody, in fact, enjoyed Edgar Doe.

In these latter days the gifted youth had suddenly discovered that all things French were perfect.  Gone were the days of classical elegancies.  Doe read only French novels which he borrowed from Pierre Poilu at Seddel Bahr.

And why?  Because they knew how to live, ces francais.  They lived deeply, and felt deeply, with their lovely emotionalism.  They ate and drank learnedly.  They suffered, sympathised, and loved, always deeply.  They were bons viveurs, in the intensest meaning of the words.  “They live, they live.”  And because of this, his spiritual home was in France.  “You English,” said he, “vous autres anglais, with your damned un-emotionalism, empty your lives of spiritual experience:  for emotion is life, and all that’s interesting in life is spiritual incident.  But the French, they live!”

He even wrote a poem about the faith which he had found, and started to declaim it to me one night in our little dug-out, “Seaview”: 

“For all emotions that are tense and strong,
And utmost knowledge, I have lived for these—­
Lived deep, and let the lesser things live long,
The everlasting hills, the lakes, the trees,
Who’d give their thousand years to sing this song
Of Life, and Man’s high sensibilities—­