Shoreham Camp

Sussex, England

July 22, 1917

Dear Family,

It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon without a cloud in the sky. When dinner was over I rested about twenty minutes and then talked with Dorland somewhat longer than I had intended. He came back last night from twenty-four hours leave to Shorncliffe where he went to see Bert who is leaving for France to day I think. He found Bert well, looking very brown and very tough, anxious to get to France and rather enjoying his experience of army life. Bert said that he had never done a parade since coming to England and that after he got out of hospital he straight away got laid up again with a piece of shrapnel in his leg. He had been through an air raid and had had quite an exciting time. Speaking of air raids, this morning after we had scrubbed out the hut and were just going on church parade, we received warning that there were hostile air craft within such distance as to make it necessary for us to stay in the huts. So we got out of parade and as no sign of approaching danger became visible began to hope that the raid was ‘called off’. The rest of the evening I read ‘The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft’ by George Gissing which I got at Worthing the other evening, a very rare and beautifully written book. I have found that it is impossible to read heavy books which require rigid concentration and deep thinking, but biography, autobiography, memoirs, and essays I find most absorbing and a great aid to sanity in the senseless, mechanical, soul destroying routing of this never ending existence. I prefer books of this nature to fiction though when I get hold of a good novel I devour it. I have been reading a good deal of A.G. Wells “Marriage” “Kipps” and “Ann Veronica.” His novels are interesting I think, not because they are works of the highest order, but because they reflect so many currents of the seething, many sided disintegrating (it seems to me) society in which we live. When I get this letter finished I am going to have a shower bath then dress and go down to Shoreham, have a glorious swim and get tea in town.

A lot of welcome mail arrived this week. Notice was received of the new arrival in the “Keith junior’ family. I immediately announced to Dorland that I had become an aunt, but a little established the correct relationship. Then, mother, your big box arrived and I made myself sick in those delicious little cakes. The fruit cake too is an irresistible creation as Dorland and I discovered at dinner time. Dorland has a weakness almost amounting to an insatiable craving for dates so I gave him a box which he devoured “a l’instant.” Next, yesterday came a letter from Will. It was very bright and cheerful. He told me about being laid up with a sprained instep and how he was reading Stevenson. He spoke, though, about the war settling down to be ‘a permanent business.’ This is a situation which I cannot bring myself to contemplate. Like you all do, I still cling to the hope that something may happen to bring the war to an early end. The Stokholm Conference next month has a great chance. After the big majority in the Reichstag against territorial annexation I feel more and more convinced in a belief which has been growing for a long time, that the peoples of the various countries could easily make peace if the militarists, the profiteers, the inflamers of prejudice and hatred the ignorant and the flunkeys not in Germany only but in the Allied countries as well, if these people could only be quashed. It is a dangerous thing to take the sword against the sword. What a terrible, wicked thing the whole military system is. The whole of a nation’s young manhood giving up its manhood, its freedom and its useful abilities, and the entrusting of a few men with arbitrary power often men who have no principles or capabilities. I know nothing which [?] and maddens like tyranny wielded exultantly by a weak and unjust tyrant.

We get up here at 5:30 and I can’t get nearly enough sleep at nights so have developed the habit of dropping off at odd moments. What with shining and cleaning and brushing and packing and unpacking I often wonder how I get any time for reading at all. You see nothing but soldiers around here and they are very strict about how you go on parade and into town. You have to wear strictly regulation clothes (after the British warmers, sticks and gloves were used to affect at Chisledon!) salute most punctiliously and generally carry yourself in a smart and soldier like manner’ which means get a vacant look on your face and walk like an automation. Friday afternoon we had a long route march with full pack. It was a blazing hot afternoon and we all found it pretty trying especially as we hadn’t been accustomed to that sort of thing. I found it very hard on the feet as, I am sorry to say, my arches seem to be going down and my ankles are very weak. So it is really impossibly for me to go in the infantry.

I went down to Worthing one evening last week. It is a most attractive town, smart, clean with beautiful rows of trees, trim gardens and well kept parks. As I was alone and there was no late bus I only stayed an hour, made a few purchases and then sat for while on the promenade listening to the music of a military band. It was playing selections from ‘Carmen’ and it was very pleasant in the cool evening air with the blue sea and throngs of people along the promenade and on the pier. I haven’t been to Brighten since last writing but intended to go in again some night this week, if I am not too tired in the evenings. Worthing is much the more attractive place in my estimation, but of course it is very quiet and not nearly so pretentious. All along the coast here the watering places form practically one long, continuous town. There is no break in the houses. Between Worthing and Shoreham is Lancing and between here and Brighton, Southwick and Portslade not to mention Hove. The latter place, of which you have probably heard, is a separate municipality from Brighton, though you can’t tell where the one ends and the other begins. I discovered an interesting fact about dirty little Shoreham, namely that in the reign of Edward it was one of the chief seaport towns in England ranking in size and importance with Portsmouth, and above Dover and Bristol!! How the mighty are fallen!

Well my pen is running out and it is nearly five o’clock so good bye dear folds and much love. It is frightfully hard to keep up one’s spirits but time and hour run through the roughest day;

affectionately,

George