Well, here we are in the third year of the war, as Kitchener foresaw, and still with a long way to go to the frontier.
Thanks, by the way, for the article about Kitchener. After all, what can one say of such an end for such a man, after such a career, in which so many times he might have found a soldier's death--then to be drowned like a rat, doing his duty? It leaves one simply speechless. I was, you see. I hadn't a comment to throw at you.
It's hot at last, I'm thankful to say, and equally thankful that the news from the front is good. It is nothing to throw one's hat in the air about, but every inch in the right direction is at least prophetic.
Nothing to tell you about. Not the smallest thing happens here. I do nothing but read my paper, fuss in the garden, which looks very pretty, do up a bundle for my filleul once in a while, write a few letters, and drive about, at sundown, in my perambulator. If that is not an absurd life for a lady in the war zone in these days, I 'd like to know what it is.
I hope this weather will last. It is good for the war and good for the crops. But I am afraid I shall hope in vain.
This has been the strangest summer I ever knew. There have been so few really summer days. I could count the hot days on my fingers. None of the things have happened on which I counted.
What a disappointment poor Russia has been to the big world, which knew nothing about her except that she could put fifteen millions of men in the field. However, as we say, "all that is only a detail." We are learning things every day. Nothing has opened our eyes more than seeing set at naught our conviction that, once the Rumanian frontier was opened to the Russians, they would be on the Danube in no time.
Do you remember how glibly we talked of the "Russian steam-roller," in September, 1914? I remember that, at that time, I had a letter from a very clever chap who told me that "expert military men" looked to see the final battle on our front, somewhere near Waterloo, before the end of October, and that even "before that, the Russian steam-roller would be crushing its way to Berlin." How much expert military men have learned since then!
Still, wasn't it, in a certain sense, lucky that, in spite of the warning of Kitchener, we did not, in the beginning, realize the road we had to travel? As I look back on the two years, it all looks to me more and more remarkable, seen even at this short perspective, that the Allied armies, and most of all, the civilians behind the lines have, in the face of the hard happenings of each day, stood up, and taken it as they have, and hoped on.