These three years--especially these two years of the war--have changed my whole outlook on life and foreshortened all that came before.

I know I shall never link back to many things (and alas! too, to many people) that once seemed important and surely were interesting.

Life in these trenches (five warring or quarrelling governments mining and sapping under me and shooting over me)--two years of universal ambassadorship in this hell are enough--enough I say, even for a man who doesn't run away from responsibilities or weary of toil.
And God knows how it has changed me and is changing me: I sometimes wonder, as a merely intellectual and quite impersonal curiosity.
Strangely enough I keep pretty well--very well, in fact.

Perhaps I've learned how to live more wisely than I knew in the old days; perhaps again, I owe it to my old grandfather who lived (and enjoyed) ninety-four years.

I have walked ten miles to-day and I sit down as the clock strikes eleven (P.M.) to write this letter.
You will recall more clearly than I certain horrible, catastrophic, universal-ruin passages in Revelation--monsters swallowing the universe, blood and fire and clouds and an eternal crash, rolling ruin enveloping all things--well, all that's come.