One afternoon I noticed a great throng of people in
front of Charing Cross Station. In a moment an am-
bulance passed; inside a soldier waved his hand to the
cheering of the people. He was cared for by a nurse.

Every few seconds an ambulance would come out
of the station with its one or two soldiers, and the great
concourse of people would welcome them and throw
flowers to them. Those soldiers had been through the
hell at the front, and all over the Kingdom the trains
brought back to their people the maimed and the
broken, day by day, in return for the magnificent youth
who had marched away with such bravery and power.

This war has no illusions. The youth who go forth
to such conditions as were never imagined before,
know what they will find and endure.

Many letters are written to be sent home only if the
writer is killed. I print two such letters:--

"But we shall live forever"
A soldier boy's last letter
(Lieutenant Eric L. Townsend, twenty years old)

Sept. 8,1916.

Dearest Mother and Father:--

You are reading this letter because I have gone under.
Of course, I know you will be terribly cut up, and that
it will be a long time before you get over it, but get over it
you must. You must be imbued with the spirit of the navy
and the army to "carry on." You will still have dear little
Donald, who is safe, at any rate for some while. If he
should ever have to go on active service I somehow feel that
his invariable good luck will bring him through.

You must console yourselves with the thought that I am
happy, whereas if I had lived--who knows?

Remember the saying attributed to Solon, "Call no
man happy till he is dead." Thanks to your self-sacrificing

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