Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 edition. Excerpt: ... flag. So you see that the war is making me a sentimentalist too!--Your affectionate brother, Richard LVI Richard Haven To Lady Starr My Dear Helen, --Of course you have heard the story of the soldier and the angels at Mons. If not, I will tell it to you; and if you have, I will (like our old friend Livesey, who cannot be deterred once he has wound himself up to be anecdotal) tell it you none the less. "Do I believe in the angels at Mons?," the soldier replied, "Of course I do. Why, I was so near them that I distinctly recognised my aunt." One hears a great deal about the change in character which experiences at the front are to effect in our men. But I doubt if there will be much of it. Most men, I imagine, will bring back almost exactly what they took out; war will be only skin deep. That at any rate is true of most of those that I have met and talked with. But, of course, a young man wounded and invalided home after the first engagement might carry the traces longer. Custom would not have blunted things for him. One effect of the war at home is to emphasise any natural tendency to satire or scorn that one may possess, don't you find? I expect you do, for you and I are very much alike. First there is the monstrous folly of the whole thing--the failure of mankind to get any wiser, the failure of Christianity to modify and control elemental cruelties and rapacities. And then there are the particular disenchantments--the muddle, the jealousies, the littlenesses. And England is peculiarly adapted for the exhibition, even exploitation, of these last, for we have an unbridled press into which any petty person may pour his grievances and censures. If one were oneself able to fight or be active in some large way, no doubt one would forget....
