THE QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1915, Page 10

THE QUESTION.

DID HE DIE IN VAIN i v A SOLDIER'S JJETTKB. "You know why I'm unhappy. It's not the dying, dear old girl, that worries me, and I know that you are sure of that as I am that my number's up. I wouldn't put it so rudely, old lady, if we didn't both feel the truth, and if couldn't both so honestly, and so humbly, and without hypocrisy say, 'God's Will he done.' It was almost a comfort to me when I confessed to you that I knew T must face the 'Valley of the Shadow' in France, and you told me that v »'i liad the same premonition. What is'H, I wonder, sister mine, this rjuecr, psychic b«;d of the twin?

"Well, anyway, as I said, it's i,ol the dying. I shall be just as jolly, right up to the end, as you will bo brave afterwards. Don't tell the Master anything till then. What DOES worry me as I squat here in my dug-out is whether 1 sihall have died in vain. "If I thought that I To! to die in vain, I would, frankly, as I !;«.ie told you, rather live and do ?.pnu thing useful with my life. All the time I was on leave I was watching, and listening, and watching; but, watch and listen as I did, I could not. persuade myself that dear old England really understood—that she was really in earnest. And the thought is a nightmare to me. Up to the moment 1 die I shall be wondering whether my dear, kind, generous, forgiving, fat-headed, fellow-countrymen will go and muck this war.

"A few successes—and then peace. An inconclusive peace, with all the bother to come again after a few years of anxiety, and then—our being wiped out the next time war comes along. If that happens I shall have died in vain, and so will all the splendid fellows who have died before me, and who must die after me.

"This, to any one else, might sound Bickeningly weak and morbid, perhaps even cowardly. But it isn't really so, because I'm not the only one with the same dread. It's in the minds of many of us ont here. They don't speak of it, but I KNOW. That wretched psychic sense again, I suppose! ''l think I would give even my soul to be sure that England understood, and would never give up the struggle till the Germans, with all their loathsome doctrines and their filthy methods, were smashed onec and for all. If I were certain of that I would die as cheerfully as I have lived, and bo would thousands more. But I'm NOT certain j and though I hope I don't funk anything that is coming to mo, the agony of the doubt is great. Up to the last moment the question will be thrashing about in my mind—SHALL I HAVE DIED IN VAIN?

"Do try and think of some way—as we agreed you should—to get this "question home on England's heart when I am dead; not for my sake—it will be too late for me then—but for the sake of the rest,"—Daily Express