It has been very hard to keep our courage alight of late . The Caporetto disaster is a dreadful thing and not even Susan can extract much consolation out of the present state of affairs . The rest of us do n't try . Gertrude keeps saying desperately , ` They must not get Venice -- they must not get Venice , ' as if by saying it often enough she can prevent them . But what is to prevent them from getting Venice I can not see . Yet , as Susan fails not to point out , there was seemingly nothing to prevent them from getting to Paris in 1914 , yet they did not get it , and she affirms they shall not get Venice either . Oh , how I hope and pray they will not -- Venice the beautiful Queen of the Adriatic . Although I 've never seen it I feel about it just as Byron did -- I 've always loved it -- it has always been to me ' a fairy city of the heart . ' Perhaps I caught my love of it from Walter , who worshipped it . It was always one of his dreams to see Venice . I remember we planned once -- down in Rainbow Valley one evening just before the war broke out -- that some time we would go together to see it and float in a gondola through its moonlit streets . `` Every fall since the war began there has been some terrible blow to our troops -- Antwerp in 1914 , Serbia in 1915 ; last fall , Rumania , and now Italy , the worst of all . I think I would give up in despair if it were not for what Walter said in his dear last letter -- that ` the dead as well as the living were fighting on our side and such an army can not be defeated . ' No it can not . We will win in the end . I will not doubt it for one moment . To let myself doubt would be to ` break faith . ' `` We have all been campaigning furiously of late for the new Victory Loan . We Junior Reds canvassed diligently and landed several tough old customers who had at first flatly refused to invest . I -- even I -- tackled Whiskers-on-the-moon .
I expected a bad XXXXX and a refusal .
army customers despair dreams faith letter living moment nothing time