I awake to the melody of the same reveille which brings ten million
soldiers to action over the world each morning; the same bugle which
sounds the end of the night’s bombardment, and the beginning of the
day’s carnage on battle fronts from the North Sea to the Mediterranean.
I yawn, stretch, lie in ten or fifteen minutes of delicious indecision
and then dress sitting on the edge of my cot. My underwear in the
daytime is my night clothes; socks are changed almost every week, dried
of the dampness of the day by the warmth of the night in bed; my sweater
and shirt also work twenty-four hours a day. The muffler mother knitted
for my neck is a fine pillow; my great sheepskin coat—my greatest
comfort and the envy of officers—plays the comforter; all these are the
constant guardians of the warmth of my body. It is they, and not parade
dress that should be allowed to wear war’s honors if they are worn for
it is they who have served. Then I rush out and wash hands and face
dutifully in cold water. Then I hasten to my breakfast—three slices of
bread and butter. The bread is free, but the butter costs five cents,
twenty-five centimes in French money, and is eaten while walking to the
field. During the morning I fly perhaps an hour and a half. I return to
lunch and an hour’s repose. Another hour or so of flying and a lecture
occupy the afternoon. On the way home at four o’clock we stop in at a
little shanty where three amiable and good-looking country girls serve
us with oysters and jam and chocolate. The oysters are better than blue
points, and cost ten cents a dozen. We talk and sing and walk home. At
six I have dinner and after dinner write letters till weary. Then I go
to bed.
The war’s toll has been 3,000,000 lives or so. A fourth of the ships are
sunk. The great nations will be bankrupted. Will we dare speak of God?
Will architecture be a good profession after the war? What is one man in
all this? I go to bed each night trying to get a perspective of life and
the world and my place.