They were strange months for me. I felt that I was in possession, as indeed I was, of a terrible secret which might lead to the ending of the world⁠—our world, as we knew it⁠—with our liberties and power. For weeks I had been pledged to say no word about it, to write not a word about it, and it was like being haunted by a specter all day long. One laughed, but the specter echoed one’s laughter and said, “Wait!” The mild sunshine of those spring days was pleasant to one’s spirit in the woods above La Fère, and in fields where machine-guns chattered a little, while overhead our airplanes dodged German “Archies.” But the specter chilled one’s blood at the reminder of vast masses of field-gray men drawing nearer to our lines in overwhelming numbers. I motored to many parts of the front, and my companion sometimes was a little Frenchman who had lost a leg in the war⁠—D’Artagnan with a wooden peg, most valiant, most gay. Along the way he recited the poems of Ronsard. At the journey’s end one day he sang old French chansons, in an English mess, within gunshot of the German lines. He climbed up a tree and gazed at the German positions, and made sketches while he hummed little tunes and said between them, “ Ah, les sacrés Boches! ⁠ ⁠… If only I could fight again!”