`` I say that verse Susan read over and over again to myself . The Lord of Hosts is with us -- and the spirits of all just men made perfect -- and even the legions and guns that Germany is massing on the western front must break against such a barrier . This is in certain uplifted moments ; but when other moments come I feel , like Gertrude , that I can not endure any longer this awful and ominous hush before the coming storm . '' 23rd March 1918 `` Armageddon has begun ! -- ` the last great fight of all ! ' Is it , I wonder ? Yesterday I went down to the post office for the mail . It was a dull , bitter day . The snow was gone but the grey , lifeless ground was frozen hard and a biting wind was blowing . The whole Glen landscape was ugly and hopeless . `` Then I got the paper with its big black headlines . Germany struck on the twenty-first . She makes big claims of guns and prisoners taken . General Haig reports that ` severe fighting continues . ' I do n't like the sound of that last expression . `` We all find we can not do any work that requires concentration of thought . So we all knit furiously , because we can do that mechanically . At least the dreadful waiting is over -- the horrible wondering where and when the blow will fall . It has fallen -- but they shall not prevail against us ! `` Oh , what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this , sitting here in my room with my journal before me ?
Jims is asleep in his crib and the wind is wailing around the window ; over my desk hangs Walter 's picture , looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes ; the Mona Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs XXXXX one side of it , and on the other a framed copy of `` The Piper . ''
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