I suppose he never got my letter, telling him about it." In his letter to Joan he went further.

He had received his uncle's letter, so he confided to her.

Perhaps she would think him a crank, but he couldn't help it.

He hated this killing business, this making of machinery for slaughtering men in bulk, like they killed pigs in Chicago.
Out on the free, sweet sea, helping to keep it clean from man's abominations, he would be away from it all.
She saw the vision of him that night, as, leaning from her window, she looked out beyond the pines: the little lonely ship amid the waste of waters; his beautiful, almost womanish, face, and the gentle dreamy eyes with their haunting suggestion of a shadow.
Her little drummer played less and less frequently to her as the months passed by.

It didn't seem to be the war he had looked forward to.