I had known it during the battle of S----, in the days that followed the battle, in moments of the Retreat, when for half an hour we would suddenly be laughing and careless as though we were in Petrograd.
And so when I look back to the weeks of whose history I wish now to give a truthful account, I am afraid of myself.

I wish to give nothing more than the facts, and yet that something that is _more_ than the facts is of the first, and indeed the only, importance.

Moreover the last impression that I wish to convey is that war is a _hysterical_ business.

I believe that that succession of days in the forest of S----, the experience of Nikitin, Semyonov, Andrey Vassilievitch, Trenchard and myself--might have occurred to any one, must have occurred to many other persons, but from the cool safe foundation on which now I stand it cannot but seem exceptional, even exaggerated.
Exaggerated, in very truth, I know that it is not.

And yet this life--so ordered, so disciplined, so rational, and THAT life--where do they join ?...