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[Page] 30
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loss of sight, and as for his memory it is fresher
I believe than my own. He reads most of the
noteworthy literature of the day and quotes it
freely. It is almost two years
since this terrible war broke over Europe.
How well I recollect the Sunday morning
when the news spread through the city that
we had broken off negotiations with Germany.
Jocelyn & Sandy were at Overwells and
Mary & I here alone. The news came to
all right minded people bringing relief
from a haunting dread that the radical
government in power would not take the
only course which honour demanded after
the violation of Belgian Neutrality, and which self-
-interest required. It was a near thing, and
many of the radical party who had approved
of the cutting down of the army, & who would
equally have starved the navy, were by no
means satisfied. What a loss of life there
has been to Europe in these memorable two years.
"The Great Push", as the British offensive is
called, is going on at this moment and
slowly but surely the "Boche" is being driven
back from France. But at a sad cost.
Today I have heard of the death of

Alick Herries, the only child of one of my oldest
friends. For a year at least he has been in the
fight with the K.O.S.B [King's Own Scottish Borderers] and hitherto escaped
even a wound. He was killed instantaneously
by a shell between Mametz and Montauban.
Since the war began of first cousin's children
there have fallen four - Pat, Charlie, and Walter
Lyon, and Jack Towers Clark; a more distant
relative, Jim Boyd of Faldonside; four of
my brothers-in -law have been in the fray,
Jim Tancred commanded the "Argyll", but she
unfortunately ran on the Bell Rock & since
then he has been King's Harbour master at
Invergordon; Wat Tancred, likewise a sailor,
is somewhere off the East Coast of Africa;
Tom Tancred, the gunner, is a Brigadier in
France, and John in the Indian Army, lost
an eye in the trences in Flanders. Various
Lumsdens, cousins in some degree of Sandy
& Mary, have been killed but none of them
I Knew. And the end is not yet. I thought the
Russians are advancing & taking prisoners
by tens of thousands, though we are hammering
on the Western front to some purpose, and
while the Italians are keeping the Austrians
busy in the Trentino, and there are signs of
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