The story of the English retreat must be familiar to you by now.  It was a wonderful experience.  I am glad to have gone through it, though I am not anxious to undergo such a time again.  We crossed the Marne at Meaux, on September 3, marching due east to Signy-Signets.  Funnily enough it was not until I had actually crossed the Marne that I suddenly realized that I was in your vicinity.  Our route, unfortunately, led right away from you, and I could not ask to get away while we were actually on the march, and possibly going many miles in another direction.  The following day, however—­the 4th—­we retraced our steps somewhat, and halted to bivouac a short distance west of a village named La Haute Maison—­roughly about six miles from you.  I immediately asked permission to ride over to Huiry.  The Major, with much regret, declined to let me leave, and, since we received orders to march again an hour later, he was right.  We marched all that night.  I have marked out our road with arrows on the little map enclosed.  We reached a place called Fontenay about 8.30 the next morning, by which time I was twenty miles from you, and not in a condition to want anything but sleep and food.  That was our farthest point south.  But, sad to say, in our advance we went by a road farther east, and quite out of reach of you, and crossed the Marne at a place called Nanteuil.  I got your first letter about one day’s march south of Mons.

Best love, dearest M------.  Write again.

Isn’t that a calm way to state such a trying experience as that retreat?  It is only a sample of a soldier’s letter.

If he were disappointed you can imagine that I was.  Luckily I had seen him in June, when he was here on a visit, having just returned from North Nigeria, after five years in the civil service, to take up his grade in the army, little dreaming there was to be a war at once.

If he had come that afternoon imagine what I should have felt to see him ride down by the picket at the gate.  He would have found me pouring tea for Captain Edwards of the Bedfords.  It would have surely added a touch of reality to the battle of the next days.  Of course I knew he was somewhere out there, but to have seen him actually riding away to it would have been different.  Yet it might not, for I am sure his conversation would have been as calm as his letters, and they read as much as if he were taking an exciting pleasure trip, with interesting risks thrown in, as anything else.  That is so English.  On some future day I suppose we shall sit together on the lawn—­he will probably lie on it—­and swap wonderful stories, for I am going to be one of the veterans of this war.

I must own that when I read the letter I found it suggestive of the days that are gone.  Imagine marching through Malplaquet and over all that West Flanders country with its memories of Marlborough, and where, had the Dutch left the Duke a free hand, he would have marched on Paris—­with other Allies—­as he did on Lille.  I must own that history, with its records of bitter enemies yesterday, bosom friends today, does not inspire one with much hope of seeing the dreamer’s vision of universal peace realized.