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The war was three months old—three centuries. By virtue of some gift of adaptation which seemed forever to discredit human sensibility, people were already beginning to live into the monstrous idea of it, acquire its ways, speak its language, regard it as a thinkable, endurable, arrangeable fact; to eat it by day, and sleep on it—yes, and soundly—at night.

The war went on; life went on; Paris went on. She had had her great hour of resistance, when, alone, exposed and defenceless, she had held back the enemy and broken his strength. She had had, afterward, her hour of triumph, the hour of the Marne; then her hour of passionate and prayerful hope, when it seemed to the watching nations that the enemy was not only held back but thrust back, and victory finally in reach. That hour had passed in its turn, giving way to the grey reality of the trenches. A new speech was growing up in this new world. There were trenches now, there was a "Front"—people were beginning to talk of their sons at the front.

The first time John Campton heard the phrase it sent a shudder through him. Winter was coming on, and he was haunted by the vision of the youths out