Here is a fragment of one of
his letters home (October 1914):--
"Les journees sont exquises, tristes et pales, egalement differentes
des crudites de nos idees et des tenebres de l'hiver. L'imagination a
vite fait de s'envoler, a travers cette lumiere adoucie, vers tous les
horizons familiers de la petite patrie, vers la vallee de Grenoble,
paresseusement allongee dans ce bain de leger soleil, au pied des
Alpes deja engourdies, vers les terres rousses de Lonnes longees par
les futaies jaunissantes ou s'abritent les gibiers, tranquilles cette
annee."
No doubt, the reason why this war has been, for France, so peculiarly
a literary war, is that the mechanical life in the trenches,
alternately so violent and so sedentary, has greatly enforced the
habit of sustained contemplation based on a vivid and tragic
experience. This has encouraged, and in many instances positively
created, a craving for literary expression, which has found abundant
opportunity for its exercise in letters, journals, and poems; and what
it has particularly developed is a form of literary art in which
Frenchmen above all other races have always excelled, that analysis of
feeling which has been defined as "le travail de ciselure morale.
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