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and "listened in" to the Tunney-Dempsey fight. Gene won after being almost knocked out in the seventh. But he came back and won the decision, so typical of many a good fight, won after near defeat and a mighty uphill comeback where faith must be had to win. I admire Tunney, the ex-Marine, before the war a truck driver. Willie is arranging tennis with Lenore and I am glad of that for I want them to be friends.

Friday we went to Francina's. Bob Clingerman was there and we all looked over Frances' European pictures. What impressed me most was a book describing the battlefields. It was full of pictures, the most realistic of the war I had ever seen. After seeing these scenes of desolation and suffering and slaughter, something more awful and sinister than any conception of the orthodox hell, I could not conceive how ant man could take one step to make such a thing possible again. There were photographs of men lying dead in the trenches, piled one on top of another, and it seemed so utterly worthless, valueless, cruel, horrible. A man who would will anything like that on the world must be a devil incarnate. The colossal selfishness! To be willing to bring upon the world such suffering for the selfish, personal aims of a few individuals.

Frances told us of the hatred in Italy of the Facists for the Royalists, the hate of the Germans for the French, and the French for the Germans, and the English for the French, and so on. Somehow, I can't imagine being happy in a land, regardless of how beautiful, where so much hatred and unrest exists. And so, after all, I think our own dear country isn't so bad after all. We, for all our faults, are pretty well united as one great people where on the whole friendship and prosperity reign. Why should we look elsewhere for something better?

Bob is still the same--is interested in his books and not so much in his locomotives. He has moved in town now--lives at the YMCA. It was good to all get together again. How far we had all traveled since we were last together--Francina all over Europe, Bob almost to the Pacific, and Willie and I around the good old USA a little bit.

Saturday Willie and I shopped in the afternoon and in the evening chopped wood, going early to bed in preparation for our Sunday expedition to the Devil's Backbone south of Girare. Dick, Ethel, Adeline, Housden, Wil and I took lunch and drove out. A beautiful spot--one of those typical ravines winding at last to the lake, I presume. The walls are almost perpendicular and made up of a sort of shale. The creek winds down the gorge. There are woods and pools and minnows and high places, all lovely. We had a delightful time. Dick should have taken up the profession of trapper or guide. His heart is in the woods always--another like Bob, who's not in quite the right niche although I think Dick's imagination and love of trains makes his position more enjoyable than Bob's. But I do think