War Letters of a Public-School Boy :: PART II WAR LETTERS

PART II WAR LETTERS

Frontispiece

Paul as a Subaltern in the A.S.C.
(From a Photograph by his Brother)

AT A HOME PORT

From April 15, 1915, to July 26 in the same year Second Lieutenant H. P. M. Jones was employed at a home port which was, and is, one of the principal centres of supply for the British Expeditionary Force. He was glad of the opportunity of obtaining an insight into the methods of supplying the British Army in the field, and was impressed with the thoroughness, efficiency, and businesslike promptitude of the Army Service Corps. He took the earliest chance of quitting this routine work and applying for service abroad.

May 15th, 1915.

You London folk seem to have been having high times with the enemy aliens. It is quite startling and quite pleasant to see English people roused to do things at last. I see from the photos in the papers that the rioting was done for a great part by men of fighting age who ought to be in the Army. It stands to reason that it is always the dregs of the population who show their patriotism by this sort of behaviour. Still, it is refreshing to see someone taking some sort of action. Everybody here is cursing the Government for its remissness with regard to Germans and Austrians resident in this country. There are exceptions, such as Germans who have absorbed the British spirit, but, generally speaking, Germans, even if naturalised, must retain their patriotic feelings towards their Fatherland, and the patriotic German is, of course, England's enemy. Therefore he will try his best to do us all the harm he can.

Personally I think we ought to take stern action in regard to the internment of all Germans in this country. My argument is not based on trivial ideas of retaliation or punishment, but it is based on facts such as the following: (a) I am a Britisher, Britain is fighting; so I fight for Britain and wish to see her everywhere victorious: (b) In Nature the strongest survive and the weaker go to the wall, and in this war Britain must prove herself either the stronger or the weaker: (c) Our policy must be guided by the idea of proving ourselves the stronger in deeds, not words—not by talk of justice or right, because invariable universal abstract standards of justice and right never existed, and never will exist, in this world. The ideal never was anything but a dream—that is why the poet can never be a politician, and vice versa. We must not let sentimental considerations stand between us and victory. Sounds just like a German talking, doesn't it? Yes, I do agree with the German point of view—except as regards frightfulness, which is really folly and does not achieve its end—but I transfer the point of view to England. Why should England allow any rival to stand in her way? In any case, are we not the world's greatest political people and the best colonisers? Leave the realms of Art to the other nations if you like—England never will be artistic, I fear—but Art is not politics. Politics—I mean primarily foreign policy—signifies the adaptation of a nation to environment of time, place and circumstance, and it is that which is the ruling fact of life.

I am now quite converted to the doctrine of facts. Though passionately idealistic in many respects, I realise that the Facts of life are in cruel but deadly opposition to the Ideals of life, and that while the Ideal remains a dream the cruel Fact remains the reality. This pseudo-philosophy arises from my having read Arnold Bennett's article in to-day's Daily News, and also from a perusal of Hudson's "Herbert Spencer." Bennett is just an idealist, but in dealing with those cruel realities of which I have spoken, he seems to me a child. Any attempt to dissociate the acts of the German Government from the views of the German people—in other words to assume that a great part of the latter want peace—is absurd. Look at France in 1870. When the Second Empire was overthrown and the Third Republic set up in its place, did the Republicans seek peace? No, they proceeded to prosecute the war to the utmost and tried to drive the invader off the soil of France. And even if in this war a succession of defeats should overthrow the German Kaiser and his Government, do you think the Germans would submit forthwith, and throw themselves on the mercy of the Allies? No, they will fight to the last man, woman and child to prevent the Rhine being crossed. So we should realise that, for our own safety's sake, we must reduce the German military forces to a position of helplessness—in fact, utterly destroy them, if we are to have any settlement. It is Germany or ourselves; and till one or the other is up or down, the war will go on.

To crush the Germans we must put every ounce into the struggle. Are we doing so? I cannot think it when I see Parliament taking such a disgraceful line on the question of drink. Small wonder that Lloyd George exclaims, "What an ignoble spectacle the House of Commons presents now!" I had thought the British Parliament to be a great and potent institution. Now I think it is a convocation of old apple women. What we want is a Cromwell or a Napoleon to knock together the heads of political parties and declare, "No more drink." What will history say when it is recorded that in the midst of this great struggle the British people refused to give up the drink that was poisoning their lives and hindering the work of the nation, and that the influence of a few brewers and capitalists was sufficient to prevent any serious reform being passed in that House which is supposed to be the people's representative?

As for the recent anti-German riots, they seem to me to have been organised by those slack loafing elements of the population who lounge about refusing to enlist. Still, I suppose this is a necessary product of our type of national civilisation. Yet that system—the English or insular, I call it—has done, as it will do, marvels. So perhaps all is for the best, but I am grieved beyond measure at the collapse of L. G.'s scheme for drastic treatment of the drink evil. He at least is a man.

Do you realise what a fine part amateur sportsmen are playing in this war? I really doubt if there will be many great athletes left if things go on as they are doing. On the same day I read that Poulton-Palmer and R. A. Lloyd are gone. Only last year, I remember seeing those two as Captains of England and Ireland respectively, shaking hands with each other and with the King at the great Rugby Football match at Twickenham. I see news is to hand also of the death in action of A. F. Wilding, a great athlete who neither drank nor smoked. So in three days we have lost the most brilliant and versatile centre three-quarter in Poulton, the cleverest drop-kick in the world in Lloyd, and the world's champion tennis-player in Wilding!

June 6th, 1915.

Lloyd George in his two last speeches has said more than anyone else during the war. He is an extraordinary man, and at his greatest when rallying the workers. I see that the Tory Press is enthusiastic about him, and also about Winston Churchill's speech of yesterday. L. G.'s remark that "conscription is not undemocratic" has set a new train of thought stirring in this country. Up to now, in the view of the average Englishman, democracy and conscription had been set at opposite poles. Personally I am not exactly a democrat, an aristocrat, a monarchist, a socialist, or a constitutionalist, but a sort of combination of them all, and a firm believer in the Will to Power and in the Strong Man. But the point is that England certainly inclines to democracy—meaning by democracy laissez-faire. Hence what is needed in a crisis like this is to bring into operation a system which, while partaking of a democratic nature, and so not being repugnant to the national type (as developed by geography, circumstance and history) may yet bring into play the advantages of military training and national organisation. If you can persuade the stolid Englishman to adopt a sort of semi-voluntary military system, which is voluntary or appears so to him, yet puts him under discipline, well then you have an ideal system for England to win this war by. Of course, there is an alternative scheme, namely, for some man of outstanding personality to come along and say, "Look here, I am master, and by my force of character I will compel you to bow to a system which I know to be good for you and which will in the end benefit you." Lloyd George might be even such a man—a CÆsar, a Charlemagne, a Cromwell, or a Napoleon.

But I confess that this amazing English race is hard to bend, even when a man of outstanding personality arises. Did not Oliver himself—a superman if ever there was one—fail in his efforts to make better those whom he ruled? Still, as Goethe says, "Personality makes the man," and perhaps even in England a great man might force our stubborn nation to his will. But I confess I doubt it. Besides, I fear the system would break down as soon as the immediate need for it had vanished. We must have regard to the evolution of our type of race-species when trying to frame measures for its advance to victory over another type of race-species, for the simple reason that, if we do not, the system we are trying to set up will remain in the air, and never come to anything until the people have become sufficiently educated in our way of thinking to accept such a scheme. It seems to me that you could never make a British Army on a German model, or a German Army on a British model, because of the difference between the types of the two nations—the only exception being where you have a superman with a wonderful mind and personality to plan the pattern and enforce its adoption.

Our problem in England is to organise the very individualistic British race without letting them imagine that they are being organised. This sounds like the problem about the irresistible force up against the insurmountable obstacle. But seriously if you have followed my train of thought you will agree with me that what is wanted is to frame a system of military service and national organisation which yet conforms to the national predilection in favour of laissez-faire. This would not be so difficult if there were two or three centuries to do it in; the difficulty is that we must do it at once. Perhaps it is impossible; perhaps the influence of our insular environment will be too strong ever to allow a general military system to grow up here—I don't know, but I hope not. Anyway, it is Lloyd George to whom we look to turn the wheels, because he has personality and that almost uncanny Celtic gift of seeing into the future.

Is it not clear that the Germans have developed to the full a system of organisation in harmony with their national character? Geography has rendered necessary to them a certain type of national policy, and I consider their methods were the only possible ones for them, though they badly needed a clever diplomatist to deceive Europe in these latter years. Now Bismarck, if he had lived until to-day, would probably have secured for Germany a leading place, not by directly fighting England—who is, of course, the natural rival of Germany—the old story of the first and the second boy in the class—but by embroiling her at some suitable moment with other Powers. Then, when all would have been weakened by the war, Germany would step in and take the spoils. Fortunately for us the Prussian is a thoroughly bad diplomatist; and he has preferred open force to policy. Last year the Germans really played their cards astoundingly badly. Did we? Well, in one sense, yes, in that we failed to have a force ready to give the Germans a swift blow as soon as they ventured on an invasion of Belgium. On the other hand, no, because Edward Grey, acting openly, and in accordance with British traditions, yet succeeded by some extraordinary means in duping our enemies and making them rush into a war never expecting that we would participate in it. By accident Grey blundered into a marvellous stroke of diplomacy. Of course, we know that all his actions were governed by an honest desire to preserve peace, but the facts show that he really deceived the Germans more than Machiavelli would have done. (The Prussian, in the average, is very prone to misunderstand his enemy.) The Germans thought we would not come in; we did come in, just when they were not expecting it; in effect, that was a master-stroke. Where we failed was that we were not ourselves ready with an adequate force. Though we strangled German commerce at sea and helped to save France, we were deficient in many elements of an army, and are still woefully so. That is the natural result of insularity.

Now if through the folly of Ministers we lose this great chance of settling with our rival, we shall be cutting our own throats. You see, I have led you, by a devious path, back to the old problem—the necessity for organising England to win this war and to establish her national type as supreme. We must take any and every step necessary to set this great nation of ours even higher than it stands now. Some nation must be political leader of the international polity; why not England, whose extraordinary colonising and governing ability is so well known? I am tired to death of talk about "crushing militarism" and of wild dreams of "a union of small States." If you want to see the latter process in operation, look at the normal state of the Balkans! States may have all the "rights" in the world, but if they are not strong enough in a political and military sense, they will never be able to maintain them. Since England—great and wise nation that she is!—has the sense to use her power benignantly, what harm would there be if she were to assert it over weaker national organisms, as man has done over the beasts? This would certainly not be possible without repeated wars. Subject nations may be treated as easily and as freely as you like when under our sway, but they must be conquered first, and we must keep our power over them even though it is hidden.

But I am dreaming myself now, for there is nothing eternal in Nature except conflict and change; and as our Empire grew, so, I fear, it must some day decay. Evolution is no respecter of persons. Anyway it is our duty to postpone that day of decline as long as we can. In my view England's claims are above all others. Our Allies are just so much use to us as we can make of them. They, too, have their national ambitions and interests, and, of course, if these clashed with ours, they would go off on their own. I blame them not at all. It is as well, however, to be prepared for contingencies. For example, four or five sparrows will combine to attack a larger bird which has a piece of bread. As soon as they get the bread the sparrows themselves begin to squabble for its possession; and perhaps two or three will set on the one that has hold of it and force him to give it up. Such is Nature—a theatre of vast, unceasing conflict. Men and nations all come under the great immutable law.

July 19th, 1915.

This coal strike in South Wales is a baffling business. As usual, English lack of system is to blame. The Government ought to have taken over all the mines, as they did the railways, right at the start of the war. But laissez-faire said "No." Now see the result. Undoubtedly men, employers and Government are all to blame—the Government for not organising the system and failing to stop the increased profits of the owners due to the rise in prices; the owners for taking those profits and making all sorts of unkept promises during the past year about meeting the men to discuss what should be done with war profits; and the men because they are imperilling the whole fate of the Navy for the sake of a few more pence a day, and for failing to show that generosity of spirit which they ought to exhibit in a national crisis like this. What gives the lie to those critics who denounce the unpatriotic conduct of the miners is the astounding proportion of recruits from the affected areas, and the fact that thousands of strikers have sons, brothers and other relatives in the trenches. The whole thing is almost a judgment on English haphazard methods, though I know those methods are only the product of our insular position. After all, we fought Napoleon with almost a revolution going on in Ireland. And do you remember the Six Acts? So history repeats itself.

The Germans are still astounding the world. This move on Russia will, I think, be ranked by military historians in the future as one of the most immense things in the story of the war—a parallel, but on a far larger scale, with the French and our own advance from the Marne to the Aisne. Unfortunately, I am afraid the Germans will be more successful than we were on that occasion—for we only drove them back 20 or 30 miles, but the Germans now seem to be menacing two great cities, half a dozen first-class fortresses, and four vital railway lines. There is no doubt that they, at least, are not playing at war. And to think that it should be Wales that may be half-crippling the Navy when we are matched with such a foe! If the Navy fails, then Heaven help us! I don't think we can lose even now, but I doubt now if Germany can lose. It may be 1793-1815 over again!

Don't imagine that economics end war. Nations can easily do without trade if they will. To win a war, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, you have to beat the enemy's forces decisively in the field and put large bodies of his troops permanently out of action, or capture important tracts of territory such as corn land or mining districts, without which he cannot wage the war. Nothing has done us more harm than all this talk about "attrition." People say, "Oh, it's all right, we can strangle Germany by means of our Navy, and only time is wanted." As a matter of fact, Germany is so well prepared by environment, history, and her own endeavours for such a war that were Berlin itself in our hands, I would not like to say we should have won. Berlin has in the past been entered by the enemy, and yet the Germans have defeated their foes. Look at Frederick the Great—he won his wars with half his own country in the enemy's hands. Make no mistake, we shall have to cut the German Army to pieces if we are to win. And we shall not succeed, at least not for any practical purpose, unless we put every man into his right place to win the war. We want the shell-makers at home, the soldiers in the field, the mere politician on the scrap-heap, and capable men at the head of affairs. There must be no more of this muddling War Office policy, no more of this defective control of vital industries and these scandalous deficiencies in equipment.[Back to Contents]

WITH THE 9th CAVALRY BRIGADE

On July 27, 1915, Paul Jones left Waterloo Station for service abroad. Shortly after his arrival in France he was ordered to proceed to the Headquarters of the 9th Cavalry Brigade (1st Cavalry Division), having been appointed Requisitioning Officer to the Brigade. His thorough knowledge of French was the determining factor in securing him this appointment, a very responsible one for a youth of 19.

August 5th, 1915.

At length a chance to write a letter home. I seem to have been travelling for weeks, and I had no time for anything but hasty postcards. My address may not convey much geographically, but I will take the risk of saying that I am very far up country, and—which of course pleases me immensely—not many miles from the real Front. My work involves a great deal of French conversation and much riding and motoring. I am, in fact, a Requisitioning Officer, a title which almost explains itself.

The journey up from the base seemed absolutely endless, but was never lacking in interest, so much was there to see. The glorious spirits of our men would be a lesson to the Jeremiahs at home. Never had I expected, never could I believe possible, that such a wonderfully jovial spirit could prevail among men going to certain danger and hardship and possible death. I saw a lot of Welshmen on the way, and wherever one met them they were singing in those gloriously rich Welsh voices.

How kind-hearted our soldiers are I realised on my journey up. Frequently alongside the railway line were groups of French kiddies shouting, "Souvenirs!" "Souvenirs!" In response our fellows were chucking out to them from the train all sorts of things, bully beef, bread, biscuits, etc., and laughing and chatting at the windows. What a diversity of tongues and accents among our soldiers! Cockney, Lancashire, Scotch, Welsh and West Country were easily recognisable. For cheerfulness and kindness you will never match the British Tommy.

I don't see so very much difference between the new and the old France, except for the greater number of uniforms; the same gay old cafÉ-life goes on as always.

Only four out of the fifteen A.S.C. officers who left London on Monday last came up-country, and I was one of the four. Eureka! also Banzai! There ought to be a chance of some excitement, anyhow. I am in glorious health and spirits and feel very pleased with life. Isn't it fine that my desire to be really close to the thick of things should be so fully gratified? Tell Hal I had two delightful swims at the base.

August 9th, 1915.

My mare is temporarily hors de combat with a cut on the hock. This is a nuisance, as I have now to rely on the hospitality of other officers in lending me either their horses or their motor-cars, or, alternatively, go about on a push-bike when I have to travel far afield, which happens almost daily. Before the week is out I am expecting to go right up into the firing-line. One is astounded at the off-hand manner in which officers who have been in the trenches take the most hair-raising adventures. An artillery officer was telling us to-day with the utmost sang-froid of the difficulty he and his comrades had in eating their dinner when poison-gas was blowing about. The gas made their eyes water to such a degree that everybody at the mess seemed to be weeping bitterly. He also told us that for a long time they had had no need of rÉveillÉ, as the Boches had a habit of dropping a Jack Johnson near by every morning at 6.15 punctually. In the short time I have been out here I have been struck with the glorious English coolness and the steadfast refusal to get flurried that marks all our tribe.

In our relations with the inhabitants of the countryside we show consideration and strict honesty. Every bit of damage done is compensated, every blade of grass is paid for, although necessarily we have first to investigate the validity of claims for damage. The whole thing is very characteristic of British integrity. I am going very strong and gradually getting the hang of my work, which is decidedly interesting.

We had a remarkable concert the other night. The whole thing—stage, paints, wigs, orchestra, curtains, scenery, everything—was got up by the 1st Cavalry Division Supply Column, and most of the performers were A.S.C. men. The most popular vocalist turned up on his own, however, viz. Captain the Maclean, of Lochbuie (of the 19th Hussars), who is quite an artist in his way. This gay, debonair Scotsman is simply worshipped by the men. One of the latter (himself holding the D.C.M. and the French MÉdaille Militaire for conspicuous bravery at Landrecies) told me Maclean was the bravest man he had ever seen; he is always at the head of a rush whether on horseback or on foot, and invariably goes into action with a hunting-crop. A French Territorial Infantry Regiment marched into the town yesterday. They all wore the new grey uniform that is superseding the red trousers and blue tunics of the old days. Quite an interesting spectacle! But for sheer beauty you should see our cavalry on the move. A wonderful sight, I assure you, even without all the gay accoutrements of the Military Tournament. In fact, to my mind, the field-dress makes the affair even more impressive. The horses are simply beauties, and every one of them is in perfect condition.

I have met an old Bedfordian among the cavalry. We have had many a chat comparing notes as to the past, especially in regard to the fierce-fought struggles of old between Bedford and the Blue-and-Blacks. We hope to get some sort of Rugger up when the winter comes, though of course a very great proportion of the cavalry officers are men from Eton, Harrow, Winchester and other schools where, I regret to say, the game of games is not played! They will have to be taught.

August 13th, 1915.

A lot of cavalry men are up trench-digging and I have had my first experience of being up really close to the firing-line. It doesn't take one long to get from here to the thick of things, and we were soon apprised of the fact by heavy and ponderous crashes. Just above us a British aeroplane was winging its flight towards the German lines. Presently one saw small flashes of flame in the air all around it, followed by curious little puffs of smoke; then came the sound of exploding shells; you know that light travels faster than sound. The Boches were potting at the 'plane. However, the British airman was easily able to clear away. After this, a Taube came in our direction and our artillery was having pots at it. Pursued by two British 'planes the Taube turned tail and skedaddled, passing exactly over our car. I wonder it didn't buzz a bomb at us, for the road was crowded with cars, lorries, waggons, and columns of marching soldiers. But it didn't, and went off as fast as it could lick.

We soon reached a village which, during the previous day, had been subjected to a mild bombardment. The results even of a few shells were staggering. A large number of the houses and the village church were shattered into atoms; nothing left but heaps of bricks, with here and there a wall standing amid the dÉbris. To me it was a remarkable spectacle, though my companions assured me that this village was in a positively palatial condition compared to other places farther up. Just as we reached the troops we were destined for, an appalling crash rent the air, and went echoing away like a peal of thunder. It was the British heavy artillery at work, though we couldn't see any batteries. Meanwhile the Boches were aiming at our aeroplanes which were flying above us continually. Amid all this our fellows were quite unmoved, and an exciting game of Soccer was in progress, every successful effort being cheered to the echo by the soldier spectators. And that, mind, though only last night the Boches put twenty-eight of our men out of action not far from this very spot, landing three shells on top of them at midnight, killing one and wounding twenty-seven others, not to mention several horses.

Our route now lay along a road roughly parallel to the firing-lines, and only a few miles behind them. We passed several camps, where all sorts of regiments were quartered. Then we came to quite a big town, which was packed with lorries and field ambulances, and with columns of British soldiers, always cheerful, though in many cases much fatigued. Finally we came back to our quarters. To me the whole experience was most interesting and exciting, and I am eagerly looking forward to a repetition of it. Next time I shall go right up to the real centre of things. It is great to be so near the scrapping, and I only hope a chance of real fighting does come my way. Anyhow, I am ready to do my duty, whatever it may be.

Well, the Germans have got that Petrograd-Warsaw railway. Apparently some people anticipate an advance on Petrograd itself. The war is assuming a phase very like that of the Napoleonic struggles. I hope 1812 repeats itself, but candidly I don't think that the Boches will put their heads into the lion's mouth by risking an advance into Russia with winter coming on.

To his Brother

August 18th, 1915.

I am very busy, but my work is becoming more and more interesting, and I am about in the open air almost all the time. To-day I have had a twenty-mile horse-ride. My little mare ran like clockwork. She is a gem of a horse. I am hoping also to get some motor driving. There is no speed limit here. Talk about express trains! No; Rugby football is not much appreciated by the 9th Brigade. Cavalry officers swear by polo. To see them play a polo match is a sheer delight, for they are the best horsemen in the world.

Many men of our Cavalry Division are at present employed in making a reserve line of trenches some distance behind the real article. Our own brigade is digging vigorously in the grounds of a fine old chÂteau. The Supply Officer and I, as his understudy, go up continually in a car conveying special supplies and to do various other duties. The chÂteau grounds are well within enemy gun range, and most of the neighbouring buildings have been blown to atoms. Yesterday the first news that greeted us from the trench-diggers was that they had been bombarded that morning by gas shells, among other pleasant surprises. While we were pursuing our duties I heard a boom, followed by a long, sighing screech, then a violent crash about fifty yards off. It was a German shell. Another and yet another followed. Suddenly an R.A.M.C. man came running up to fetch a stretcher—someone had been knocked out. As the nearest man at hand I joined him in carrying the stretcher, and we doubled our fastest for the trees where the first shot had pitched. We found that an R.A.M.C. man had been struck above the ankle by a piece of shrapnel. The wound was small, but deep and ugly, and the leg was broken. The poor chap was in terrible pain. We conveyed him as carefully as we could to the field ambulance. There had been other casualties hereabouts in the morning.

More and more shells, and then a lull. After this exhibition of afternoon hate, we took tea with some officers of the 15th Hussars in a tent in the chÂteau grounds. It was a delicious meal, and was not interrupted, though enemy shells from time to time shot over our heads and exploded some distance away in the woods behind. The ineffectiveness of the enemy shelling was greeted every time there was an explosion by cat-calls, shouts and whistling on the part of our imperturbable soldiers. Then the enemy diverted his guns to a village through which our return road ran. On our approaching this place we found our way barred by military policemen, who informed us the traffic was temporarily held up, and that we would have to seek our destination by another and a more devious route. Looking back, one is amused at the nonchalance of this tea in the open with the Hussar officers, while German missiles were shooting over our heads and crashing to earth a couple of hundred yards away. Had the enemy shortened the range we should all have gone up among the little birds.

Did you see that splendid joke in Punch—an old man talking to a very badly wounded Irish soldier swathed in bandages from head to foot? The former says, "This is a terrible war, isn't it, my man?" Pat replies, "Yes, sorr, it is that; a rale tirrible war. But faith! 'tis better than no war at all." Capital, and so deliciously Irish!

August 23rd, 1915.

Excessively busy days these—out sometimes from nine in the morning till about ten at night, often missing meals perforce. A few days back I was in the city whose name practically sums up the character of British fighting—Ypres. Never have I seen such a picture of desolation. Not a house standing; only skeletons of buildings, shattered walls, and gaping window openings, from which all vestige of glass has long since disappeared. The Church and the Cloth Hall are simply piles of dÉbris. To walk along the streets is like a kind of nightmare, even when the Boches are not indulging in a spell of hate against the place. Talk of Pompeii—why, this puts it quite among the "also-rans." What a pathetic spectacle to see a whole city in ruins! Stupefaction and sadness at the wholesale destruction is my impression of this melancholy ruin of an historic town.

Having seen my rations delivered to our regiments, I and my companions (two Hussar officers) visited a battery of 5-inch howitzers at work not far off, through the medium of a friendly Artillery officer. Their headquarters have been amazingly lucky in not being hit up to date. They told us that there was going to be great "strafing" that night, that the Boches were very good gunners, but that they and the French sometimes became quarrelsome and loosed off at each other like fury for a short time, both sides doing very little real damage. As we were chatting a long whistle-blast betokened the presence of a Taube, and our companions quickly dragged us out of sight into a dug-out, lest the enemy airman should spot men about and send back the range. You must understand that the guns are so concealed that it is almost impossible to see them even when you know where they are located. After the aerial visitor cleared off, we had a great tea, with all the ground about us shaking to the reverberation of the battery discharges. Presently a long-drawn-out screech in the distance, and a fearful crash in the middle distance. "That's Percy again!" said the Artillery officer. We found that "Percy" is the name for a German 17-incher, which frequently drops shells ten miles behind our lines. The smallest crater made by his shells would accommodate a locomotive engine with ease. "Percy" is no doubt "some gun," as the Yankees would say. It was a curious sensation to walk about the fields with shells from both sides flying over one's head. Some gas shells had been discharged that day, and the air in places was quite heavy with the odour of them—not unpleasant to smell, but most mephitic, and apt to make your eyes water.

Whom do you think I met on the main road up to-day? None other than Reggie Lloyd, who was one of my best pals at Dulwich. Our car was moving very fast and overtook his. I stopped and jumped out, and we exchanged a firm handshake and a few words before we had to be moving on again "in the cause of duty." He is a second lieutenant in the R.E., and looked thundering fit. To-day I saw him again. On this occasion he was moving about fifty miles an hour on a motor-bike, and we only had time for a hand-wave as we passed. What a thrill to meet an old pal like that out here in the fire zone!

August 28th, 1915.

To go up the road from here to the firing-line is a great experience. You see, as you pass along, all the multifarious items of army organisation—long lines of lorries, horsed-wagons, limbers, guns, columns of marching men, motor-cars by the score, French soldiers, British soldiers, aeroplanes spinning merrily overhead—truly a wonderful spectacle. You have no conception of the abominable state of the main roads out here. The pavÉ road, peculiar to these parts, is always a bone-shaker at the best of times, but now, after the passage of so much heavy traffic, it is simply appalling. A curious feature is the extraordinary straightness of the main roads, down which you can literally see for miles. The by-roads, on the other hand, seem to abound in right-angled turns, and it is not an easy matter to drive a car along at any considerable rate of speed.

My knowledge of French has come in very useful indeed, but for these outlying country districts a knowledge of Flemish would be even more valuable. Many persons about here speak not one word of French, and Flemish is almost always used by the people en famille. It is a kind of mixture of low German and middle English. I can usually get at people's meanings, and even make them understand mine, by a jargon embracing sometimes words from Chaucer and sometimes a little German. Listening to the language when spoken one is reminded of rather nasal Welsh. There is a distinct resemblance between the general sound of Welsh and Flemish in conversation.

These parts constitute one of the most Catholic districts in Europe; the people are quite as devout as those of the south of Ireland. Wherever you go on the roads you are confronted with shrines—little structures with an altar, holy images, etc., that can be seen through a glass window barred across with slender pieces of iron. Above the door is an admonition urging the passer-by to stop and say an "Ave" or a "Pater." All the dedications to saints and the Virgin are in Latin. For example, this is a very common heading for a shrine, "Ave, Maria, gratiÆ plena." I have also seen shrines dedicated to some of those old chaps that Dad is so interested in—Antony of Padua, Francis of Assisi, etc. All over the place you meet, stuck in boxes with glass fronts and mounted on poles, tiny waxen images of various saints, or Christ on the Cross, the Virgin Mary, etc., etc. When a native comes to one of these shrines or images, he pulls off his hat, crosses himself, repeats a prayer, and passes on, probably confident that his sins are forgiven. Everybody goes to Mass at the church of his commune at seven o'clock each morning, and often in the evening as well—on Sunday about three times. Church spires are about the only landmarks in this very flat and rather uninteresting country. The towers vary between the square and the spire. The church itself is always large and quite imposing. You don't see churches of anything like the same size in English villages of corresponding population. A common sight as you ride along these roads is to see the curÉ, dressed in a long black surtout and a huge wide-brimmed hat just like "Don Bartola," the music-master in the opera of Il Barbiere de Siviglia. The curÉ gravely salutes you as you pass by, "Bon jour, mon ami!"

I am billeted with very decent folk, extremely devout Catholics. The old man is the secretary to the Mayor. He spends his spare time learning English, and can read an English newspaper quite well. My room is of the kind I like—plain, with two huge windows opening like folding-doors, and only a tiny carpet to attract the dust; the rest clean, bare boards. In the room are two waxen images, one of the Virgin and Child, and one of Christ carrying a child in His arms; also a waxen model in a case of glass of the Virgin and Child, besides no fewer than three crucifixes. This is only characteristic of the whole village: every room I've seen hereabouts seems crowded with images. There are lots of these images, chipped and smashed, lying about the streets of Ypres. I suppose where you are at present [Scotland] everybody is a Presbyterian and very much against all ritual. There is at least this resemblance between Scot and Flemish: they both call the church "kirk" or "kerque." It is rather amusing to think that, according to the ideas of some English Churchmen, both Scottish Presbyterian and Flemish Catholic are lost for ever; while the Baptist of Llanelly is equally convinced that all three of them are; and each imagines the other to be hopelessly wrong. The war has this advantage: that it cuts athwart of all such ridiculous distinctions—for have we not among the Allies English Churchmen and Nonconformists, Catholics, Mohammedans, Hindus and secular Frenchmen, all fighting on the one side against another side which includes Catholics, Protestants and Mohammedans? I say what matter what a man believes if he does his duty?

The last two or three days I have spent in more or less local work, meaning by that districts within about ten miles of headquarters. I have been in the saddle all day, from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M., the only interval being for lunch. Riding is glorious sport. I don't think I shall ever be able to live without a horse in the future. I have been using here one of my own mares, and a fine charger belonging to a 9th Lancer employed at H.Q. (you remember it was this regiment that made the famous charge at Le Cateau back in October). It is a glorious steed this, full of "devil," and a bit bad-tempered. My own big mare is a rather quiet horse, very good at trotting long distances; my other one is smaller but more fiery. I prefer to ride whenever possible a horse that really takes some managing.

September 8th, 1915.

I am glad you are invigorated and pleased with your trip to the land of Burns and Harry Lauder. The Scottish Highlands are the exact opposite of these flat plains. Never in my life have I seen a district so absolutely level as this. There are but three hills in these parts, and these are the only landmarks for miles and miles. Otherwise every road is like every other, every field and every clump of trees the same. The roads are all either dead straight or, in the case of side roads, full of right-angle bends. There is nothing of that sinuous curving which characterises English country roads. As you get nearer the firing-line the roads become worse owing to the passage of Army traffic, till finally they end up in mere broad tracks full of holes and humps. When the weather is bad the mud is appalling—even the Dulwich footer-ground variety comes a bad second—added to which there is, in the case of main roads, the nuisance of a most unlevel pavÉ, which, it is true, keeps free from mud, but to travel along which in a motor-car is torture. The way the Army lorries go bumping along—many of them old motor-buses with the top parts discarded—is stupendous. It is a strange sight occasionally to see approaching you a real motor-bus, painted grey and full of Tommies. I almost stopped one the other day, near the fire zone, and asked to be taken to Oxford Circus; it all seemed so familiar.

The news from Russia isn't very inspiriting. It looks as if Riga and Rovno will follow in the wake of Warsaw and Novo-Georgievsk. Not that the mere capture of a town means anything in itself, but the Boches must be getting a store of ammunition and guns through their successes. Still, it might be that 1812 would repeat itself, though I fear the Germans have studied history too well to fall into the pit that destroyed Napoleon. Nous verrons.

I went down the other day to an advanced Field Supply DepÔt. I often think of the steady flow of goods across the Channel from the home port where I began my Army experience, and the vastness of the silent work behind the scenes that is needed to keep the Army going. You would be amazed to find how little is known even in the A.S.C. itself of that which I have been privileged to see. It has a spice of romance about it, this moving of vast stores from England to the trenches. Out here one gets fresh bread and meat regularly. There are also ample supplies of preserved meat. As for "bully" beef, it is rare good stuff, and I am by no means averse from the hard Army biscuit.

It is the chief part of my duties to make local purchases or requisitions of goods as they are needed. Local resources are always used to the utmost, though G.H.Q. is careful to insist on all goods being duly paid for, or an official requisition-note being handed to the seller. You will realise that in this sort of work I get a lot of practice in French. The French spoken in these parts is very thick, quite different from the metallic French of Paris.

I am told that when we are moving in the field, cavalry go twice as fast as any other branch of the Service. When we begin to move, my job will be really most exciting and interesting, as I shall have to be right on ahead with a store of supplies, bought, requisitioned, or obtained somehow, to keep things going till the ordinary service of lorries and horsed wagons adapts itself to the new conditions. Whatever happens I hope to see some sport.

I get on excellently with the cavalry officers. They have a bright charm of their own and are absolutely fearless. Most of them are descendants of the old English and Scottish chivalry. They are intensely Conservative in opinion, not over intellectual, but men with fine traditions and noble instincts. They have a passion for horses and all things equine.

September 16th, 1915.

So you have had an experience of the Zepps. I am glad London bore it philosophically. I never imagined that it would be possible seriously to perturb the people of England by this species of frightfulness. As Dad puts it, "Curiosity quite mastered every sense of fear," but if the Zepps. are to continue paying visits to our suburb, you may have to evacuate 198 and dig yourselves in in the garden with communicating trenches leading from your dug-outs to Croxted Road and Herne Hill.

It is splendid how our fellows keep rolling up to fight, for, believe me, the war is no joke out here. Very few people who have been out think it's all a death-or-glory sort of business. On the contrary, it is a steady and persistent strain, a strain under which the strongest nerves are apt to give way after a time—I am talking, of course, of the trenches. When the cavalry go into action as cavalry, they are bound to suffer fearfully, being so exposed, but there's no doubt that they will do their job, and put a still greater number of the Boches out of action. This is a war in which there is nothing picturesque or romantic. It takes all the cheerfulness of the British Tommy to overmaster the grinding strain of trench warfare, though as man is by nature a fighter, he presently begins to throw off the trammels of civilisation and live À la naturelle. The British soldier has done marvels in this war. Nothing but his irrepressible spirits and lion-hearted courage would have held up this great host of Boches armed with new and strange implements of war and with every weapon known to science.

September 18th, 1915.

In an interval of relaxation, our division gave a Horse Show to-day. To these cavalrymen, horses are as meat and drink, almost the one topic of their conversation, at once their delight and their business. A lot of notabilities from various places in France came up to see the Show. It was the most magnificent display of horseflesh I have ever seen. It was held in a large open field. The programme included competitions for officers' and troopers' horses (light and heavy), driving for the limbers of the regiment, work by machine-gun sections, races, jumping, turn-out of A.S.C. wagons, and what-not. A wonderful display was that of the officers' chargers, in which the long line of competitors rode, trotted and galloped past the General who was judging. Some of the men's horses were also very good, and really ran the officers' chargers close for merit. The first three prize-winners would be worth a clear £450 apiece. To describe the efficiency of the wagon-driving, the smartness of their turn-out, the quickness and neatness of all their manoeuvres, is beyond me. There was no lance or sword play. The whole business had been arranged to see that everything was as efficient as possible, and to promote a spirit of healthy rivalry among the different regiments. It was an extraordinary spectacle, not fifteen miles from the firing-line, with the big guns booming in one's ears the whole time—very characteristic of the Englishman's love of sport and its value to the nation. This is one of the things that the Boches never can, or will be able to, understand. They cannot realise how these "mad English" can forget the War when in the middle of it, and when any minute their "sport" might be interrupted by a "Jack Johnson." I was with our Brigade Veterinary Officer, who, of course, is an equine expert. It was a treat to hear him telling off the points of the magnificent chargers passing in front of us, pawing the ground and snorting, full of dash and fire. To me the whole affair had a profound interest. I have never enjoyed myself more, and really its psychological significance was immense.

On the morning of 25th September, 1915, the 1st and 4th Corps of the British Army delivered an attack on the enemy line between La BassÉe Canal on the north and a point opposite the village of Grenay on the south. There were subsidiary simultaneous attacks east of Ypres by the 5th Corps, and north of the La BassÉe Canal by the 3rd and the Indian Corps. Our main attack was made in co-operation with the French offensive on our right. The British Cavalry Corps was posted in the neighbourhood of St. Pol and Bailleul-les-Pernes, in readiness to co-operate with the French Cavalry in pushing home any success which might be attained by the combined offensive.

September 23rd, 1915.

I am about to leave on an official mission, the nature of which I cannot disclose to you for the time being. My kit has had to be sent away, and I am only equipped with things I can carry about me or in my saddle-wallets on the horses. Revolver, haversack, official books, map-case and respirator are slung about my body. It is fine to be independent of trunks. Last night I bivouacked in a field, and one day I was quartered in a mining village which before the war must have been a busy place. It reminded me very much of the outskirts of Llanelly. I am feeling better in health and spirits than ever before.

An article by a Liberal M.P. that appeared recently in the Daily Chronicle annoyed me very much. Previously I had imagined the writer to be rather a sportsman and a game fighter; but his insulting references in this article to the "good fellows" in the trenches, who are "excellent in their time and place," etc., simply set my teeth on edge. I know full well that the type of thing that he calls "a voice from the trenches" is only an exploitation of sensational newspapers, as Tommy never by any chance in my experience of him talks of subjects like conscription. But the sheer cruelty of this M.P.'s patronising talk of the men who are dying by thousands to keep him and his kind safe at home absolutely surpasses everything. The suggestion that the man at the Front knows less of how to run wars than M.P.s who have, in all probability, never seen a drop of blood shed or a gun fired in anger in their lives, is, on the face of it, ludicrous. We have heard a lot about the Army not interfering in politics. Well and good; but let the politicians cease to meddle with military affairs, unless, of course, it is manifest that the most sacred civil rights of the people are being sacrificed to a caucus of officers, like those who tried to hold up the Home Rule Bill.

To-day a big detachment of German prisoners was brought into the village. They were well dressed and equipped, and in reasonably good spirits.

October 3rd, 1915.

Life continues to use me well, though in the last week or two I have been all-ends up with work. I have usually managed to keep fairly dry, but the weather is awful, and despite mackintoshes and greatcoats galore, I have been absolutely soaked on more than one occasion, especially one night about four days back, when I had to sleep in the open on a heath in pouring rain, and with a bitter wind blowing. However, one thinks but little of that sort of thing when campaigning, and I have never been better in health.

I wish I could describe to you some of the scenes I witnessed during the past week, above all, on that never-to-be-forgotten day before the great attack was made. We found ourselves moving along the same road as the Guards—Grenadiers, Scots, and Welsh—who were going up to the attack (the Welsh Guards had never been in action before, having only recently been constituted, but I hear they did great things). Never had I seen such a sight as that evening before the attack. On one side of the road our cavalry, on the other the Guardsmen, all moving forward to the accompaniment of the sound of guns booming sullenly ahead. We halted for a time beside a detachment of Life Guards, among whom I recognised an old Alleynian named Kemp, whom I had not seen since last October. We had a few minutes' pleasant conversation before passing on with our respective columns.

A day or two ago I was to have gone right up to the battlefield with supplies, but a sudden change in orders made it impossible. However, a number of our lot were up there. They tell me it was a fearful scene—the ground littered with corpses, and all the dÉbris of a battlefield scattered around. I was bitterly disappointed at not getting right up, but duty is duty, and I had orders to do other things. We all hope that the day of the great move forward has now begun to dawn, but there's no doubt it will be a devil of a job, as the Boches are fighting like hell to regain the lost ground. All yesterday, last night and this morning the guns have been rumbling away with more than usual vigour.

One day last week I visited a soldiers' cemetery; it was chiefly used for men who have died of wounds at a casualty clearing station near by. A most mournful and yet most impressive spectacle it was. As I returned I saw long strings of ambulances coming down from the Front—a sight that spoke eloquently of the toll that this war is taking of our best. I note you say that the new Welsh Division will be going out presently, either to France or to the Dardanelles. I hope that they will prove worthy of the great name that the Welsh have made for themselves in this war. Yesterday I chatted with a Welshman from Pontypridd, a Regular in the First South Wales Borderers. He had been out here right from the very start, had been twice wounded, and, except for one convalescent period of a fortnight, had had no leave at all. Chris Fowkes, who was wounded some time back, was in the same company as this sturdy Welshman.[1]

October 6th, 1915.

The general impression here now is that the advance is proving a very tough proposition. The casualty list is of colossal dimensions. All the signs point to a long war.

A French interpreter is attached to each battalion of British infantry, or regiment of cavalry, with a liaison officer, or interpreter officer, attached to each brigade in addition. Personally, I have never found any need for an interpreter's services. I am able to make almost any of my requirements comprehensible to the inhabitants, and I think I may describe myself as being really fluent in French by this time. It is perfectly amazing how few of our people can talk any other language than their own.

That was a piquant incident at the College as described by Hal. A little dash of unconventionality like that is wanted in Dulwich and in all Public Schools. They, like other national institutions, are terribly prone to get into a groove. Though that groove be a good one, yet an occasional lift out of it can do no harm. But there's no doubt about it that, conservative though they may be, our Public Schools have done marvellously in this war. The system has proved its value ten thousand times over, and never so much as on these gory plains of Flanders and the hilly crags of Gallipoli. Of late the officer casualties have been fearful, and most of them these days seem to be killed, not wounded.

So Bulgaria seems determined to come in against us. If this means that Roumania and Greece join us, I don't see why the Germans should be so keen on enlisting the Bulgars on their side. Funny, isn't it, how all Europe is falling into the whirlpool of war? Every one of the little States finds that the war is a chance for it to get something out of someone else—hence its decision to join in. I hope our Government won't go sending big forces out to Albania or Salonika, or such places, unless and until they are sure it would be to England's benefit. For the life of me, I can't see why we should carry these footling little nations on our shoulders. All they do is to turn on you as soon as your back is turned, as vide the Bulgars themselves. The end of it all is that everyone is scrapping against someone else for some selfish aim, and the main object and high ideals for which we entered the war are wholly forgotten.

I cannot describe to you the muddy conditions out here. Mud lies inches thick on the roads, and is kept damp and slimy by the continual passage of limbers, horses, guns, wagons and lorries—the final result being a veritable swamp. The other day a man of the 19th Hussars was watering two horses when he got himself and the two animals hopelessly bogged beside the pond in a swamp which he mistook for dry ground. Eventually we tugged him and the two horses out with ropes. They were all soaked with slime and mud from head to foot. As for the infantrymen, when they come out of the trenches, they are caked in mud all over. In these parts mud is the great feature of the war.

October 11th, 1915.

I continue to be very busy. You must understand that it is my job to supplement the ordinary supplies that come up on the Supply Column from the railway with supplies obtained locally. These latter are frequently as essential as the former. Especially is this the case with cavalry, who are naturally apt, when moving, to get separated from their supplies, owing to the rapidity of their progress. Then comes the Requisitioning Officer's real task. That is not to say that this is the only case in which he has to work. On the contrary, the work is absolutely continuous. The men always want all sorts of things that the Supply Column does not provide, and it is up to me to get those things, and what is more, in most cases, to transport them also. I am in charge of a number of wagons, limbers, etc., to carry out this latter job, and I am responsible for the care and transport of the ordinary supplies for our Brigade Headquarters after they leave the Supply Column. I have also to do the following jobs: (1) Distribute pay to the large number of A.S.C. men attached to Headquarters; (2) when we are in billets, to see to the billeting arrangements for the brigade, and adjust the relations between the troops and whatever inhabitants there may be.

You must not imagine that there are no inhabitants in these districts. On the contrary, it is my experience that people cling to their homes and lead their ordinary lives right up into the fire zone. Our authorities take the greatest care not to offend the inhabitants. Let me give you an illustration. Recently we were at a small village, now quite blown to atoms, and considered a hot spot even out here, and which really has no inhabitants. Well, on the occasion of entrenching operations our chaps found it necessary to take some doors from ruined houses. They wanted the timber for planks for trench supports and dug-outs. Though all the inhabitants had fled or been killed long before, and the village was little better than a dust-heap, yet a solemn and portentous court of inquiry was held on those doors: were we justified in taking them, and should payment be made for them to the old inhabitants or their representatives? Eventually it was decided that, as the doors were taken to help to make trenches, they might be considered as destroyed by a fait de guerre, which, I believe, corresponds to an "act of God" in the civil courts, and payment ought not therefore to be made for the doors. It was, however, pointed out that if the said doors had been used to make a road, not a trench, they would not be faits de guerre, and in such case payment would have had to be made to the Mayor of the destroyed commune!

"Business as usual" is the motto they try to live up to throughout these parts, and every effort is made to persuade people that the war is only a sort of accident. Money remains money, and there are people selling and buying right up to places where many lives are lost every day. The position is really almost that described in a Bystander cartoon, depicting a peasant standing above a line of our trenches amid a hell of shot and bursting shrapnel, and saying, "Messieurs, I am desolated to trouble you, but I must request you to fight in my other field, as I plough this one to-day." By the way, The Bystander has succeeded, as no other paper save perhaps Punch has done, in catching the atmosphere that exists out here.

I assure you that just behind the firing-line people are minting money out of our occupation. Not only do they get paid regularly if British troops are billeted on them, but they can name their own prices for milk, beer, eggs, etc., and all those other things that Tommy is anxious for, and for which he can afford to pay. He is, I think, paid three times as much as either the French or the Boche soldiers. True, I have met some pitiful cases of refugeeism, but to a very large number of people in Northern France the war is nothing but somewhat of a nuisance. Of course, where they do feel it is in their own terrible casualty lists. I have known family after family in the little villages who have lost one or two sons. In many communes one finds that the Mayor has been killed while serving at the front, and a deputy acts in his stead. The Mayor of the place where we are now stationed has three sons fighting, one at Verdun. I had an agreeable chat a few days back with the local schoolmaster, who was home on short leave from the trenches.

It is curious that only The Bystander and Punch should have succeeded in catching the atmosphere of "Somewhere in France." Many of the war correspondents, brilliantly though they write, have missed it altogether. John Buchan is not so bad, when he writes soberly, but he will let his imagination run away with him. Talking of writers, what a delightful thing was that article of Zangwill's in the Daily Chronicle on "The Perils of Walking in War-time"! Its brilliant satire, firm grasp of facts, lively humour and racy style quite took my fancy.

I have had some interesting chats with some of the old soldiers in our division about Mons, the Marne and the Aisne, and all "those brave days of old." One chap, now acting as a clerk at Headquarters, wears the ribbons of the D.C.M. and French MÉdaille Militaire for swimming a river (on the retreat from Mons) amid a tempest of shot and shell, and giving warning to a party of our people on the other side who were in the greatest danger of being surrounded—and quite oblivious of the fact—by the Boches who had forced the passage of a bridge some way off. This brave fellow led his menaced comrades to another bridge, and so enabled them all to get clear.

The Supply Officer of one of our brigades is F. P. Knox, a Dulwich man, who captained the old school at cricket back in 1895 or so and I believe led Oxford to victory after that. His brother you may know—N. A. Knox, the famous fast bowler.

I was horrified to see in a recent casualty list among the killed the name of Second Lieutenant H. O. Beer. I remember him as a rather clever, quiet, inoffensive, distinctly popular fellow in Doulton's House. He left at the end of July, 1914, without getting any colours, but after doing quite well in all games. He won a Junior Scholarship, but failed to get a Senior. He was made a School Prefect in September, 1913, and you will see him in the very middle of the back row of the photo of the Prefects that we have—a markedly good-looking fellow, with light hair brushed across his forehead. What a wealth of tragedy and yet also of honour is expressed in the last line of his obituary notice in The Times—"He fell leading his platoon, aged twenty years." Only yesterday, as it were, we were at school together—I remember handing him off with great vigour on the football field—and now! It was just the same with poor Reynolds[2] and Bray.[3] But I mustn't go on in this strain.

October 15th, 1915.

The Balkan business is a startling knockout for those enthusiasts who see in the development of small States salvation for the world! If people would only accept the fact that this is a material world they would not be surprised at the situation. Myself, I consider that our diplomacy has failed, probably because it did not offer tempting enough bribes to Bulgaria and Greece. No matter; what is the fate of a few tuppenny-ha'penny Balkan States, who have never done a thing worth doing, beside that of the British Empire! Why should we always play the philanthropic idiot towards all these wretched little nations? As if any of them—or anyone else, for that matter, in international politics—knows the meaning of the word gratitude! However righteous our policy may have been, it doesn't seem to have worked in South-East Europe, and the Boches appear to have got home first there. I don't think it is so much a triumph for their diplomacy as a judgment on the blundering stupidity of ours. But when all's said and done, the alliance or hostility of a few Bulgars, Greeks or Roumanians doesn't count for so much, anyhow. "Come the three corners of the world in arms, and we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue, if England to herself do rest but true."

Have you seen the obituary notices of Captain Osmond Williams,[4] of the Welsh Guards? His funeral took place not half a mile from the spot where we were at the time. The 19th Hussars was once his old regiment, and as he was simply idolised by the men, crowds of them went to the burial. He had a most romantic career—a career that might have stepped out of the pages of Scott or Dumas.

Yesterday I played Soccer for Headquarters against the 15th Hussars. We beat them 2 to 1. However, I can't work up any enthusiasm for Soccer. Oh! for a real game of Rugger. Still, the Tommies—the English ones, at least—think Soccer the only game, so one must cut one's cloth to one's opportunities. It is something to get a game of any sort out here. Is the October number of The Alleynian out yet? I hope they keep their war list up to date. Our Roll of Honour is as good as anybody's, and should be carefully attended to.

October 20th, 1915.

Whom do you think I met the other day leading a column of motor lorries up to our brigade H.Q.? No less a person than G. P. S. Clark, the centre three-quarter who scored that wonderful try against Haileybury in my first year in the team—running and feinting his way through right from his own line. He is a motor expert, and has been gazetted to the M.T. branch of the A.S.C.

Is there any chance of my getting the post of A.D.C. to a Welsh brigadier? If the Welsh division is due out presently it would be rather a good job. But if it involved my coming back to England for any length of time I wouldn't take it. I am perfectly satisfied with my present work, but still would very much like to become a real combatant. Against the defect of short sight I can put the following points:

(a) Three months of Active Service, almost invariably in the neighbourhood of the firing-line; on several occasions right up in it.
(b) I have always been attached to the Headquarters of a Cavalry Brigade, have been in the closest contact with the Brigade Staff, and have taken my orders from the Staff Captain direct—a very large proportion of those orders about real Staff work.
(c) I have now a real linguistic fluency in French; pretty useful German also.
(d) I have been acting under the supervision of a Supply Officer, whose work I do when he is away, and I know the system of transport and supply backwards.
(e) I have a thorough knowledge of how to make up supplies by requisition and purchase on the countryside.
(f) On the march I move at the head of the limbers which form the Cavalry Divisional train, and am second in command of them all, so I know something about that branch of work, too.
(g) I am quite a useful horseman.

You may say on reading the above list of virtues that a glass case is the right place for me, but I know to the full that if one wants one of these "knutty" jobs one has to represent oneself as a sort of little tin god. Now don't imagine that I am dissatisfied with my present job. I am more than pleased with it; still I am very keen to become a fighting soldier.

October 25th, 1915.

My present quarters are in a mill. I have a fine large room, also first-rate stabling for my horses. Brigade Headquarters are in one of those magnificent chÂteaux that are dotted over this part of France. A gorgeous place it must have been in time of peace, and so it is now except that it is beginning to show signs of war-wear and constant use.

I am very bucked with life. All that we would like now would be a stupendous advance. This nibbling policy is all very well, but it doesn't suit cavalry.

My horses have just been clipped. It is the customary thing at this time of year, as horses' coats get very thick, and in consequence they sweat heavily when on the march. The effect of clipping is curious in the extreme, as the animal no longer appears of its original colour, but of the colour of its skin, i.e., mouse-grey. My mare was originally chestnut; now she is a dark grey. Horses are much happier with their thick coats off. The hair will have grown again in a couple of weeks, but it won't be thick for some time. My mare is a grand horse for steady, continuous work, also quite a good galloper. I had a gallop for two furlongs or so the other day with the Staff Captain and the A.D.C., each mounted on a crack cavalry charger. My mare came in with the first of them, and had more left in her at the end than either of the others. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that the function of the horse has vanished in modern war. On the contrary, even in the transport, horses are quite as much used as motors. Horse transport is not confined to roads, and can pass much more easily than motor vehicles over rough ground. When you get up near the front, where the roads are badly cut up, horse transport is not only desirable but essential. Of course, the motor is absolutely invaluable for speedy transport. But on the whole one can say that, except for motor-buses, which sometimes take the men right up close to the trenches, and except for the ammunition park—a collection of powerful and very speedy lorries loaded up with munitions, which has always to be in readiness to dash up to the front in view of an emergency—except in these cases, it is safe to say that motor transport ends some miles from the actual fighting-line, and all the remaining transport is horsed. True, motor-cars containing Generals on inspection, Supply officers, etc., go all over the place, often right up behind the firing-line. Also there are the motor machine-gun cars, and the armoured cars, which are fighting units proper. But don't for goodness' sake imagine that the horse is done with in modern war because of the advent of the motor.

What the motor has done is to alter the whole face of things because of the extraordinary rapidity with which it enables you to fling troops or supplies up to the Front or transport them from point to point. But for the effective use of motor vehicles you need pretty good roads. You will remember how in the earlier months of the War, ourselves, the Germans and the French effected big troop movements simply by motor transport. You will recall the occasion on which the French flung a force across the suburbs of Paris and attacked the Boches on the right, thus beginning the movement known as the Battle of the Marne. Then there was the occasion when Hindenburg attacked the Russians in October, 1914, feinting at their left and striking at their right at Tannenberg with a force of armoured cars, cavalry, and infantry conveyed in motors. Neither of these movements could have been achieved before the advent of motor transport. As this war progresses, the need for really capable and cool-headed motor drivers will steadily increase. But it will be none the less invaluable to know how to manage a horse—whether to ride it, drive a wagon, or ride-and-drive in a limber. One of our limber horses is a grey captured from the Germans last year. He is a very good worker and doesn't seem to mind being a prisoner in the least.

I must tell you of a funny incident. That night when we were sleeping on the heath, which I referred to in a previous letter (p. 149), our Medical Officer was awakened at 2 A.M. by a frantic signaller, that is, one of the R.E. motor-cycle dispatch riders. It was pouring rain at the time and bitterly cold. The signaller solemnly handed the M.O. an envelope marked "Urgent and Special." The M.O. opened it, his mind full of visions of men mortally stricken awaiting immediate attention and of other tragic things. Judge his astonishment when he found inside the following note from his O.C.: "Kindly render your monthly inoculation return to Headquarters before the end of the week." What the M.O. said is unprintable, as this return had already been sent in, and, in any case, is just a formality of no importance to anybody.

My affection for the British soldier deepens the more I know of him. To a student of human nature it is an everlasting joy to get Tommy to tell you his experiences in his own inimitable language, interspersed with all sorts of gory adjectives. It is so different from and better than the sort of thing you read in the Society papers. Human nature as it really is comes out strongly in these splendid men at the Front. A talk with Tommy is of intense interest to a chap as keen as I am on psychology.

November 5th, 1915.

Still much occupied; out almost all day and every day, either on horseback or in a motor. Much interest has been displayed in these parts in the visit of the King. I have passed the chÂteau where he is staying almost every day this past week.

The district where we are now quartered is filled with refugees, among them some orphans from Loos. Some people about here have been terribly hit by the war, but some are reaping enormous profits out of it. Such is the caprice of fortune. All over this neighbourhood you see the names of Life Guards, Royal Horse Guards, Grenadiers, etc., carved on doors and panels. We are close to a large town which is an important point in the scheme of things.

Events seem to be taking a remarkable turn. Who, at the start of the war, would have thought that we would have been able to land a military force in the Balkan Peninsula? It is really a remarkable position all round. Asquith's speech was frank if nothing else. There appears to have been discord in the Cabinet, so now we are about to have something like a "Committee of Public Safety." Marvellous race, the English! Lord Derby seems to be an outstanding personality just now. Have you noticed how each month of the war is marked by some new phase of public opinion? Optimism, pessimism, spies, Zeppelins, economy, pink forms, voluntaryism, conscription, munitions—each of these has been for a time the centre of public interest, and each has swiftly fallen from its pedestal to be replaced by some other phase. Curiously enough, the talk at home has not been influenced in any direct way by the real progress of the war, but by the effect on the popular imagination of trivial incidents, magnified out of all proportion by sensational journals. The war goes on, nevertheless, showing that the great British spirit is something far too strong and deep to be really influenced by the caprices of public opinion.

It is amusing to see how the views of certain newspapers vary from month to month, and even more diverting to observe how all the amateur strategists claim that they had really predicted every phase of the military operations. Believe me, however, the war has been and is quite different from any ideas entertained in regard to it in the early weeks and months. It is a blend of grotesque incongruities that would be humorous were not one side of them so tragic and terrible. No one here seems to know anything definite about what is going on. One has considerable local knowledge but very little general information. Probably the latter is impossible to get in this sort of mix-up—the scale on which the war is being waged is so vast.

You will see roughly from Sir John French's latest dispatch the part played by the cavalry in the advance of 25th September-5th October. You will not, of course, be able to glean much of what actually happened, but I can tell you we had a most interesting time.

How tiresome is the tosh written in the papers and spoken in Parliament about the war! One wonders if it would not be a good plan to shut up Parliament for a time, though I suppose it is a good thing to have a place where men can vent their foolish thoughts. But I am thoroughly weary of "Statements by the Prime Minister" which state nothing, and of mere denunciations by Sir Arthur Markham and Sir Edward Carson; also of the shrieking of the Yellow Press, the wishy-washiness of the Liberal Press and the Spectator, the impenetrable Conservatism of the Morning Post, and the noisy sensationalism of the Bottomley—Austin Harrison crew. Thank goodness the strong broad stream of British spirit runs deeper and is much purer than would appear from this froth and scum on the surface.

Recently it has been a period of Catholic festivals about here. Some days there have been processions and bell-ringing from morn to eve. The other day was the FÊte des Morts, and lately there was the French All Saints' Day. It is a singular sensation to hear the chime of church bells blending with the thudding of the guns.

November 18th, 1915.

Yesterday I rode twenty-five miles. A delightful experience it was, too;—in crisp winter weather and with the surrounding country covered with snow. It has become very cold of late, but I am fond of cold weather, especially when it keeps dry. Assigned some special work by the Staff Captain, I had permission to move when and how I liked, instead of accompanying the Column as I usually do. The result was that I was able to join up with the Veterinary section attached to the brigade. We moved at our own pace, resting our horses where we wanted to and giving them a good drink and feed en route, instead of jogging on monotonously with the Column. Our horses were thoroughly fit and full of life when we reached our destination, and good for another twenty-five miles if necessary. You would not believe how much horses benefit from care and attention as to food and rest. The time you lose in watering, resting and feeding, you can always more than make up through the consequent freshness of your animals. Obviously, when speed is absolutely vital, you can't choose your time to rest the horses. For example: on those never-to-be-forgotten days, 23-26 September last, we used to move at a rapid trot for hours on end—for the expectation then was that the Boche line might be broken. This latest "trek" had not the urgency or the wild excitement of that, and we were able to take our own time.

I had a ripping game of Rugger a few days back, playing for the 19th Hussars against the Bedford Yeomanry. The latter, who included some old Bedford School boys, beat us, though only by one point. I played forward in the first half of the game, and scrum-half in the second. It was a treat to handle a Rugby ball again!

Things are becoming rather mixed in English politics, what with Asquith's contradictory statements about conscription, Carson resigning and Winston flinging up politics for the Army. His resignation is creditable to Winston, and at a moment like this he would naturally want to do his bit at the Front. Everybody in the cavalry that I have spoken to considers him a good sportsman. Myself, I regard Churchill as a man with a real touch of genius.

The Haldane controversy seems to have started afresh. How terrible is the ingratitude of the masses! If Haldane had done no more than create the Territorials and the Officers' Training Corps he would have had an everlasting claim to fame; but when one considers also his creation of the General Staff, and his arrangements for mobilising, equipping, transporting and supplying the B.E.F.—well, one begins to realise that the man is a Colossus. And yet the wretched Jingoes continue to bespatter him with mud, and I suppose the nation in the mass regards him as a species of highly-educated spy! But perhaps the majority of the people have never heard of him—Charlie Chaplin is a far more living personality to most of them, I make no doubt.

I referred in a recent letter (p. 162), to the fluctuating phases of opinion in England in regard to the war. A new phase would appear now to have arisen and taken the place of the Lord Derby boom. This new phase is one of criticism of past military and naval operations—Neuve Chapelle, Loos, Suvla Bay, the Narrows, Antwerp, etc. etc., all of which are being discussed with equal zest and ignorance. Mark my words, there will soon be a new phase or an old one will recur.

To his Brother.

November 23rd, 1915.

I am so sorry Dulwich got done down by Bedford. Of all our matches, that is the one we are most keen on winning. Still, we can't expect to win always, and we have not lost to Bedford for three years till now. I had perhaps the unique experience of being in a team which never lost a Bedford match. In 1912-13, when I got my colours, we drew 28 points all; in 1913-14 we won, 16 to 15; and last year, 32 to 16. Well, I would have given anything for the School to have got home a fourth time against old Bedford, but it was not to be.

The sudden drop in temperature during the last fortnight has affected most people here. I have escaped without any sort of cold, though nine-tenths of the officers and men have been down with chills.

My mare has developed a devil of a temper of late, and bites and kicks like anything—a sign of exuberant vigour. Fortunately she gets on well with my other horse, and they don't "strafe" each other in the stable. To get horses in the same stable on good terms with each other is largely a question of feeding them at the same time. My second horse, which my servant rides when we are on the move, is a jolly little chestnut, very strong and hardy, with a magnificent long tail. I ride him and the mare on alternate days. Horses are ridiculous creatures. They will eat all sorts of things, even wood, mud, and pieces of coal, as if from sheer cussedness. It can't be because they are hungry, as they get plenty to eat in the way of oats, hay, dry clover, etc. Sometimes, as if from devilment, they will roll in the mud a few minutes after they have been nicely groomed. Some of our regiments have a lot of mules, which are given to fearful brayings—a sound which is a cross between a horse's whinny, a donkey's hee-haw and an elephant's trumpeting. Mules bite and kick each other continually, but they will do any amount of work when so inclined.

November 29th, 1915.

I see that the Welshmen are coming out. May they strafe the Boches to the wide! I hope the Cymry will prove themselves worthy successors to Owain Glyndwr and all the other grand old chiefs who have given us such a name in arms. Times have changed, and to-day, instead of smiting your foe with a club or a sword, you "strafe" him with gas-shells and machine-guns. The old way was the best, but the natural instinct of all things animate to fight remains, as it always will remain.

We have received some of The Times' broad-sheets. I don't exactly know whether they are good or not. It is undoubtedly a benefit to have "bits" from great writers to skim over when you haven't the time, or the inclination, to wade through a volume. On the other hand, it is intensely aggravating to experience the feeling of incompleteness that naturally results from having your reading suddenly cut off.

December 3rd, 1915.

The other day I was ordered to visit a certain battery in the firing-line. No one had a ghost of an idea as to their present location, but I discovered where their supplies were being drawn from—a spot two miles from the line, which was being "strafed" daily. Off I went to this place in my car, but nobody there knew a thing about the people I wanted, so I had to go up to the railway station and crave the loan of a telephone. After a great deal of bother I got on to some genial soul who knew where the Brigade Headquarters were of the lot I was after. He told me where they had gone to, but whether they were still there or not he didn't know. Anyhow, it was a clue. So, like Pillingshot (in P. G.'s story), I worked on it.

After consulting my maps, and chatting with dozens of military police, interpreters, etc., I took my car forward by a certain road. By this time it was pitch dark, except for star shells and gun flashes. The road was crammed with traffic. We took a wrong turning, and eventually found ourselves on an apology for a road that ended in a swamp full of shell-holes, and had to retrace our steps gingerly. After blundering about in the dark for some time we struck the village we were looking for, a hopeless sort of place crammed with Scotsmen, all exceedingly grimy, but gay and cheerful. In one house the men were waltzing to the strains of a mouth-organ, though the boom of the guns was shaking the house every second or so.

Having reached the Headquarters I was in quest of, I ascertained from them that the battery with which I had business to do was now at a spot two miles away down a main road which was the scene of such desperate fighting not long back. The O.C. strongly advised me not to take the car down there, as if I did "it was likely that the car would stop some pieces of metal." There was nothing for it but to walk down the road leading to the recently captured village. It was very dark, but star-shells, with their weird green light, would illuminate the countryside every five minutes or so. In the darkness one could vaguely discern the shape of the first-line transport wagons taking up rations to the trenches, and small columns of silently marching men, and now and then a motor lorry belonging to some ammunition park. Presently, after what seemed an interminable walk, I found the battery, who themselves had only just arrived, and executed my job in a half-ruined house. To get back to my car I borrowed a horse and rode part of the way with a number of led horses, which, having brought up the guns, were going back to the wagon line.

On getting to my car I decided that my best road to return would be to go straight along into a certain large town, instead of the route we'd come by. As we spun along a voice from the darkness hailed us: "Have you room for an officer?" We at once pulled up and told him to jump in. Poor devil! he was almost in a state of collapse and talked wildly. He had been six months in the trenches, and had just come out of them in a half-hysterical state. I had to speak to him pretty firmly before he could pull himself together. We took him to his destination, and he was most grateful for the lift.

It was an uncanny experience, this wandering about in the darkness in desolate regions a few hundred yards from the trenches. In this grim struggle there is none of the glory and pomp of war as exhibited in the days of old, when rival armies met amid the blare of trumpets and the waving of standards. The pageantry of war is gone. We have now war in all its fierceness, grime and cold-bloodedness without any picturesque glamour or romance. Can you wonder that in such conditions civilised human nature out here swiftly changes and is replaced by elemental savagery?

In December, 1915, Paul Jones had short leave, and spent six days at home. He took advantage of the opportunity to have a game of football on the familiar arena in Dulwich, playing for the Old Alleynians against the College 1st XV.

December 21st, 1915.

All well after a pleasant crossing. The blundering authorities kept us and three other leave trains six hours in —— station, no one being allowed to leave the platform! We eventually reached —— at 7 P.M. The two first men I met on the boat were old Dulwich boys, W. J. Barnard and Bobby Dicke. Barnard is a field-gunner, and Dicke is in the 1st Royal Fusiliers. I also met another O.A., named Corsan, who is captain in Barnard's battery. How well I remember ragging with him in choir practices! We had a thrilling chat over old times. Both Barnard and Corsan went through the Battle of Loos. On reaching France we found there was no means of getting to our respective destinations until next morning, so we all dined together with a couple of other subs., one in the K.R.R.s, a mere boy in appearance but a veteran in experience. How delightful to meet old pals, and what splendid fellows these old public-school men are!

Everything is very festive about here just now. Officers and men are making ready to pass Christmas in the old-fashioned way.

December 28th, 1915.

We had a very jolly Christmas. The revellings have, in fact, only just begun to subside. Our Brigade Major spent his Christmas in the trenches along with his brother, a V.C. In that part of the line there was a truce for a quarter of an hour on Christmas Day, and a number of Englishmen and Germans jumped out and started talking together. A German gave one of our men a Christmas tree about two feet high as a souvenir. It is of the usual variety, covered with tinsel and adorned with glass balls.

January 4th, 1916.

I was indescribably grieved to read of the death of Nightingale.[5] Himself an O.A., he was in the Modern Sixth about 1900. He was a master at the dear old school from 1907, or thereabouts. I regarded him as one of my best friends among the masters. The year I took on the captaincy of the Junior School "footer," he gave me immense help as master in charge of the Junior School games. But really cricket was his game; he was a splendid bat on his day, a useful slow bowler and a fine fieldsman. He was such an enthusiast for cricket that he would take any and every chance of playing, no matter whether against the 1st XI or against the Junior School. In character he was extremely simple and unaffected—not a great scholar, but a shrewd thinker with a serviceable knowledge of history and literature, and a fine taste in reading. Personally he was one of the kindest of men and so easy to get on with. Though in no sense a professional soldier, yet from a strong feeling of duty he joined right at the start as a private in, I believe, the Rifle Brigade, with whom he served many months in France. He then got a commission in the 7th Lincolns, with whom he was serving when killed. Here was a man who threw up all to take up soldiering, not because he had the military instinct, but from sheer patriotism and sense of duty. It was just like him—at school he would always put himself out to play in a game if a team was a man short. He was always called "Nighty" by the boys. Can you wonder, with the example of such a man before me, that I should be longing to get into the Infantry? Heavens! A man would not be a man who did not feel as I feel about this matter.

Well, Sir John Simon has resigned. Rather a pity that such a career should be cut short. Still, at best he was a mere politician, and to tell you the truth I don't like politicians much. All the same, I do think Simon did some valuable work as Home Secretary, and earlier as Attorney-General.

For once the British Government appears to have acted with vigour—I mean by occupying Salonika and telling the Greeks politely to "hop it." Result, the Greeks have hopped it. How much more simple and effective this than to jaw about "the rights of neutrals," the "sanctity of small nations," etc., etc.! No! take a strong line in this world, and you're more likely to get what you want than by cajolery.

January 26th, 1916.

One day last week I mounted my horse at 2.15 P.M. and rode in a south-easterly direction. For the first couple of miles things were as usual—crowds of soldiers about, of course, and lots of transport on the move. One village I found populated half by civilians and half by troops. Thereafter the country becomes barer and grimmer, and the fields for the most part are uncultivated—in itself a remarkable thing in France. The next village I came to bore signs of having been shelled, but was still habitable. Originally it must have been quite a pleasant little place. Not many of the native inhabitants remained, and the houses for the most part were filled with Scotsmen and sappers.

Passing on, with the roar of the guns getting more and more distinct, we come to a place that leaves no manner of doubt that there is a war on. There are graves by the roadside, and shell-holes. Lines of trenches and coils of barbed wire arrest your attention. Now there comes into view the battered remnant of what was once a busy mining village. The great slag-heap towers up on our right hand, its sides scarred and smashed by shell-fire. Not a house is left standing. There are only shattered walls and heaps of bricks. Over all hangs that curious odour one gets at the Front—a sort of combined smell of burning and decay. A grotesque effect is produced by a signboard hanging outside a ruined tenement and bearing the words: "Delattre, DÉbitant," or, in other words, "Delattre's Inn." On the right a gunner is standing on what was once a house roof, hacking away at the beams with a pickaxe; he is getting firewood, no doubt. Solemnly a general service wagon rolls by, carrying a load of fuel, and a limber crashes past at a trot. A little single-line railway from the colliery crosses the road, and even now there are standing on it two or three trucks, strange to say quite intact. The machinery at the pit-head is all smashed, bent and broken. You are impressed with the strange, eerie silence, when suddenly there is an earth-shaking crash. One of our heavies has been fired. You hear the shell whirring away on its journey of destruction, and finally a faint, far-distant crash, perhaps marking the end of a dozen men, five or ten miles off.

Resuming my journey I reached another village, where the destruction had been simply terrible, surpassing even that of Ypres. This village bears a name famous in the annals of British arms, for it was from here that the Guards charged on that memorable day, September 25th. I saw a line of old trenches just behind the village, and rode over to examine them. Perhaps it was from this very line that our men advanced. I tried to picture to myself what it must have been like—valour, endurance, turmoil, destruction, death, a great forward rush by brave men that spent itself, and fizzled out just on the eve of triumph. Why?

On the left there was a large cemetery. Many of the crosses had soldiers' caps hung on them, and in one case the man was evidently a Catholic, for crucifix and image had been taken down from a post on the roadside and laid on the grave. I tried to find if there was any trace of the names of two O.A.s who fell in this battle, Crabbe and Beer, but failed to discover either name.

It was now getting late, so I retraced my steps and cantered homewards. In this war-scarred region I actually met an old French farmer driving his horse and trap along the road leading towards the trenches just as if there was no war raging; and near the one habitable house of the district small boys were playing merrily, while their parents were calling them in and scolding them in shrill voices. In some ruined houses were yet more Scotsmen, most ubiquitous of peoples. I halted to chat with an old military policeman who used to be with the 9th Cavalry Brigade. Then home. A very interesting afternoon's work, which gave one a real insight into "the conduct and results of war" as waged in these cynical days.

During another visit I paid to this desolate region there was a "strafe" of some magnitude on. As I rode I could hear the long whistling and heavy crump of high explosives that the enemy were dropping into a village about a mile to the left, and could see the flame and smoke of the explosion. Our own guns soon began to chime in. It was quite a cheerful little show, what with the long-drawn whining of approaching Boche shells, the crash of explosions, the thud of our guns replying, and the weird, fluttering noise of our shells going over. Presently the gun duel became more and more violent. The fearful crashes of our "heavies," the groans, shrieks and whines of the shells on their message of death, the tremendous thuds of Boche explosions, and the whistling hum of shrapnel pieces flying around—all this made up a pandemonium of noise. My further progress along this road was barred by a thud amongst some ruined houses about a hundred yards in front of me, showing that the "strafe" was veering round to my direction. Deviating from this road I met some old acquaintances in the Gunners, and had tea with them in their dug-out, my horse being put up in what in pre-war days had been somebody's sitting-room. I cantered home at dusk. All this evening there has been a "hate" on—the sky alive with gun-flashes and lit up by star-shells, and the air resounding with bangings and thuddings.

February 1st, 1916.

Hereabouts we seem now to be doing ten times as much "strafing" as the Boches. This afternoon I saw at fifty yards' distance some 60-pounders (the old "Long-Toms") being fired. First, there would come a flash of flame from the muzzle, followed by an ear-splitting bang. Then the whole gun seemed to hurl itself bodily forward and slide back into position again. Meanwhile you could hear the shell tearing its way through the air with the curious shuddering, or fluttering, noise that shells make in transit.

Riding north the other day I came to a place where the only sounds that could be heard were the intermittent crackle of rifle-fire mingling with the shrill tones of a woman haggling over the price of bread with an old chap who had driven out with his pony and cart from an adjacent town to sell his goods. The roof of the woman's house had mostly vanished and some of the walls were non-existent, being replaced by sandbags. A notice proclaimed that there was coffee and milk for sale within. Is it not extraordinary to encounter this sort of thing right up in the battle zone? It shows how human nature can adapt itself to the most uncustomary things. I suppose we should be the same—stick to the old home so long as there was a brick left standing.

I ran across an O.A., named Tatnell, who holds a commission in the Motor Machine Gun Corps. He told me he had met lots of O.A.s out here. Some of the fellows he mentioned are mere boys of seventeen and eighteen still. One of them, Williams, I remember last year as a drummer in the Corps. Honestly, the old school has done splendidly. Every one of the fellows I used to know from the age of seventeen onwards is serving, and they were all serving long before there was any talk of Derby schemes.

To his Brother.

February 10th, 1916.

I went into the trenches a few days back—not in the front line, but as far as Brigade Headquarters, which is a sort of series of caverns in the ground, and is approached by a long communication trench. Nothing much was happening; and, anyway, this particular trench is so deep that there is nothing to be seen save a strip of sky above your head. In a few places you can get out and stand on the open ground without much danger. The spectacle is curious—practically nothing visible to indicate that there is a war on. No soldiers in sight, only a lot of shell-holes and barbed wire, and a general sense of desolation, with an occasional crack of a rifle bullet, the whistle and crash of Boche shells and the bang of our own guns from just behind.

I suppose that the Army class at Dulwich are hot favourites this year for the Form Cup, and the Engineers for the Side. Our star on the Modern Side has, I fear, waned. I shall never forget that final Side match last year, when, with a team much the weaker on paper, we (the Modern Side, captained by Paul Jones) snatched a victory by sheer tactics. It was the best game, or rather, one of the four best games, I remember—the other three being the Bedford match in 1913, when A. H. Gilligan shone so brilliantly; the famous 28-28 draw at Bedford in 1912; and the Haileybury match of the same year. In every one of these games the football reached a high standard, and the result was a pretty fair indication of the run of the play, except perhaps in the second game, in which it was the personal brilliance of the Gilligans and Evans that snatched an almost lost game out of the fire. Great Scott! What wouldn't I give to be starting my school career again? Make the most of your school days, my son, for you'll never have such a time again!

March 2nd, 1916.

A few days ago I went up to see Elias—Captain T. Elias, son-in-law of Dr. MacNamara, M.P.—and had tea with "C" Company, 1st London Welsh. To my amazement I discovered that Percy Davies—now Major Davies, son of Mr. David Davies, Mayor of Swansea, 1917, and editor of the South Wales Daily Post—was in the same village at the time. So I went along to his mess; we were overjoyed to meet one another. He introduced me to his messmates, a ripping set of chaps, who included Sir Alfred Mond's son, and one Parry, whose brother played for Dulwich, inside to Harold Gilligan, in Evans's year. Amazing coincidences, what? At the invitation of these fellows I went with them to a concert they had got up in the village. It was quite the best show of its kind I have seen out here, and there are lots of concert-parties in these parts. The Welsh have a gift of music that is peculiar to them alone. There was some first-rate singing at the concert; and a private soldier—a Tommy, mark you!—played Liszt's "No. 2 Rhapsody" and Schubert's "Marche Militaire" almost flawlessly. And the way the audience appreciated it! Then we had some first-rate comic work—really refined, not cheap and coarse—by a man whom I am sure I've seen at Llandrindod. Altogether it was a first-rate show—by miles the most interesting, intellectual, refined and capable performance I've seen out here.

They have shows of various kinds every night of the week—boxing contests, trials by jury, concerts, etc. What enterprise and intelligence our countrymen have! Percy Davies himself looks after the boxing, and he made quite a telling little speech in announcing his plans for the coming week. Mond is a good chap, very jovial, boyish and unsophisticated. In fact, all these fellows are of the very best, and of outstanding intelligence. Would that I were with them! I was struck by the remarkable difference between these officers and the cavalry officers with whom I am in daily association. Each type is wholly admirable in its own way, but they have not many characteristics in common.

April 14th, 1916.

I derive great pleasure and interest from watching the methods of these French peasants with their horses. It is nothing short of marvellous. They never groom their horses and never clean the harness or bits, yet the horses keep fit as fiddles and look really well too. Their intelligence is extraordinary. Almost every night I see the old chap, at whose farm I keep my own horses, come in with four or five horses from ploughing—riding on one, not in the orthodox fashion, i.e., astride, but with both legs hanging over the horse's near side, something like ladies' style of riding, but without saddle, braces, or stirrups. He is leading no fewer than four other horses on one rein—a remarkable thing in itself. When he gets into his farmyard he slides off and gives some sort of a weird shout that sounds like "Ooee-ee-ee!" The moment the horses hear this off they go to the pond in one corner of the yard and drink their fill.

Meanwhile the farmer has gone into his house. Presently he reappears at the door and utters something like "Oy-eh!" He may be fifty yards from his horses and never goes near them, but as soon as they hear this call they leave the pond and troop off into their stable, where each horse takes up his own place and stands still there ready to be tethered. They all know exactly where to stand, and the old chap unharnesses them, hangs up the harness for use next day, chucks a few handfuls of oats into the manger, shoves some hay into the rack, and leaves them for the night. He never troubles about drying their legs and hoofs after their immersion in the pond. Probably if you treated one of our horses in that fashion he would be likely to get a "cracked heel" and go lame. But these French farm horses never seem to mind in the least. Well, one lives and learns. Our grooms are vastly amused at these methods of horse-managing. The baffling thing is the wonderful health enjoyed by the French horses. It is very rare for any of them to go lame or sick, or even lose condition despite their—to us—extraordinary mode de vivre.

April 27th, 1916.

I see that poor Kitter[6] has been killed. It is too horrible; first Nightingale, now Kittermaster. At Dulwich Kitter was always looked upon as a prototype of K. of K. He was a very silent man, who nevertheless took a very real interest in the affairs of the school, his form, and his "House." He knew a lot about military tactics, and his chief hobby was the Corps, for which he worked and slaved in school-time and out. He taught us fellows more about military discipline and training than you could get from months of study. He was always having little field-days, extra drills, and so forth, and while any movements were on he was always explaining and talking to you, showing why this, and why that, and so forth. He had a fund of dry humour. One of the best men at Dulwich, I always thought! Poor chap! Well, well!

In May, 1916, Paul came home on leave. He spent a very enjoyable week in London and had the satisfaction of meeting many old College friends. On 12th May I saw him off by the 8.10 A.M. train from Victoria. There is a clear picture of him in my mind's eye standing on the platform before taking his seat in the waiting train, cheerily greeting this friend and that, conspicuous in the throng of officers by his massive physique. He looked the incarnation of young manly vigour, courage and hope, and there was about him a fresh and fragrant air like the atmosphere of that delicious spring morning. The future is mercifully veiled from man. Little did either of us think when saying farewell, clasping hands and gazing lovingly into each other's eyes, that we would never meet again on this earth.

May 15th, 1916.

Had a pleasant crossing to France. I dined in an hotel with a gunner lieutenant, who in civil life was a Professor of Literature, a charming and cultured man. We discussed some of our respective pet theories on Art and Life, the Novel and the Drama, etc., and found many points of agreement.

Well! it was a great leave. There is no countryside to compare with the English. If you had lived among the flats of Flanders you would find the tamest English scenery beautiful. Not that we are situated at present in unbeautiful surroundings. In fact, the downs about here are very pleasant, and there are many trees in the valleys; but give me the English countryside. Then there is London! Dear old London! to me the one town in the world. Our own home, too, with its happy blend of urban and rural. And then the old school——! Yes, it was a great leave, there can be no possible doubt about it. Would that it had been twice as long!

On arrival at our quarters I found my horses very well. They are looking perfectly beautiful just now, their coats shining, smooth and glossy like silk. My big one really blazes on a sunny day, and my cob is not far behind him. I shall have a very busy time in the next ten days, arranging for a supply of about 30 tons a week of green fodder to be purchased in weekly instalments in the neighbouring countryside. All the troops are going to bivouac in the fields shortly, as they always do this time of the year, remaining under canvas until September, or even October if the weather permits.

May 18th, 1916.

Thanks so much for the "Shakespeare"; it was exactly what I wanted. I am making a careful study of the Bard's works again, and with an enthusiasm that has not one whit abated; rather it has augmented. I only wish it had been possible to see some of his plays whilst on leave.

What a superman Shakespeare was! The interest of his plays is absolutely perennial. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of his work is the astonishing consistency of the characters in his dramatis personÆ. His characters invariably behave exactly as people of that type would and do behave in real life. Thus we have the illusion that the characters conceived by his mighty imagination are themselves real. He has hit with marvellous accuracy on the points in human nature that are common to almost all ages, and, mutatis mutandis, his plays could be staged in the nineteenth or twentieth century without losing any of their power.

Men of the type of Hamlet are doubtless rare, yet we all know the sort of genius who is so much a genius that he is incapable of action and does nothing but reflect. Hamlet seems meant to show how vain it is to be merely a philosopher in this world. Hamlet is always pondering, thinking of the abstract rights and wrongs of the case. In the result, though he does eventually avenge his father's murder, his introspection and vacillation have led to the death of himself and no fewer than three other innocent persons—Ophelia, Polonius and Laertes. Yet Hamlet was at least twice as brainy as the rest of them, and he was also a good sportsman; for instance, he refuses to kill Claudius when he finds him at a disadvantage—that is, when Claudius is praying.

To me the lesson of the play seems to be this—the only policy that really works in this world is to "go in and get the goods," as the Canadians say. The philosopher usually causes more trouble than his philosophy is worth. It is the old lesson of the Girondins and Jacobins over again. No one doubts which of them had the purer and loftier ideals. Equally no one doubts that the Girondins, despite all this, were hopelessly outmanoeuvred by the practical Jacobins, who had not a tithe of their brains.

To change the subject, I have been getting a lot of swimming lately. At a big cement works in a neighbouring town there is an enormous pond in a quarry. The water is about 15 feet deep all round and not at all stagnant, and there is a splendid place for diving. Yesterday I was down at a neighbouring seaport on business and got a delightful swim in the sea. A swim means to me almost as much as a Rugby match. I am going down to the cement-works pool every day, and whenever possible I shall have a swim in the sea. The weather just at present is wonderful, the sunshine simply glorious. Do not imagine that I am neglecting my work. In fact, I have been tremendously busy buying and arranging for green fodder for about 2,000 horses at the rate of 4 lbs. per horse per diem. By to-morrow noon I shall have contracts concluded to keep the brigade supplied until further orders.

May 21st, 1916.

Thanks so much for congratulatory messages. It certainly was gratifying to get the second pip, and a particularly pleasant coincidence that it should be gazetted on May 18th [his birthday].

The weather in "this pleasant land of France" remains wonderful. The sun is really shining. In the height of summer I have never known more beautiful weather. This, on the whole, is a picturesque part of France, and everything looks at its best just now. The lanes and wooded downs here might be in Surrey.

I was seven hours in the saddle yesterday. The General himself commented the other day on the splendid condition of my horses. They certainly are looking extraordinarily well.

May 28th, 1916.

I note that Winston Churchill suggested in the House of Commons the other day that the Cavalry should be turned into Infantry. With due respect to him, I think that he is all wrong. Whenever the "Push" comes, cavalry will be not only desirable, but absolutely and vitally essential. The day of cavalry charges may have gone, but I agree with Conan Doyle that "the time will never come when a brave and a capable man who is mounted will be useless to his comrades." You might, indeed, mount them in motor cars, but a man with a horse has three times the freedom and the scope for scouting and independent action that a man has who is brought up in a motor and then dumped to shift for himself. I entirely agree with Churchill, nevertheless, about the large number of able-bodied men employed behind the fighting-lines. I only wish I were in the trenches myself, I can tell you. My rejection for the Infantry was a bitter blow!

Everybody here is grieved at the death in action of Captain Platt, —— Hussars, attached Coldstream Guards. I knew him quite well, and we were great friends. He was a chivalrous gentleman, and very clever intellectually, quite a bit of a poet in his way.

June 2nd, 1916.

We are now in bivouacs in a big field. I have rigged up a first-rate tent, made out of cart-cover, with a sort of enclosed dressing-room for washing, etc., attached. We've got a fine mess-tent, 30 feet long by 20 feet wide, made out of wagon-sheetings. It is not only much more pleasant, but a good deal cheaper, to live in the open like this.

So Churchill has once again leapt to the fore as a critic of the Army. Mind, I have a lot of sympathy with some of his arguments, but in general this last speech seemed to me mere wild and whirling words. I note that L. G. now appears in the rÔle of Conciliator-in-General to Ireland. If anyone can settle this miserable Irish question, he will.

The war drags wearily along on its monotonous course. Are you reading Conan Doyle's review in the Strand of the early stages of the war? The style is not so good as John Buchan's, and perhaps he is inclined to miss the broad issues of the conflict. But for details, and for pictures of incidents that go to make up war, Conan Doyle's narrative is very good indeed. The story of the heroic fight of "L" Battery R.H.A. at Le Cateau, when the whole battery was wiped out save for an odd man or two, is admirably told. War was war in those days, not like this earthworm war that has replaced it. Still, no doubt the trench phase will not last for ever.

June 9th, 1916.

The school cricket XI seems to have been doing badly. It was undoubtedly hard lines to go under by only four runs to Bedford, but our bad season is only a tribute to the patriotism of the school, for I can see from the names of the eleven that we have no one playing over the age of 17. Our system of training the young idea in cricket is very much inferior to the training for footer. The consequence is that in Dulwich cricket a young team is probably destined for disaster, whereas I know from experience that whenever we've had a young footer team it has had quite as much success as teams exclusively composed of fellows in their last year at school.

To speak of bigger matters, it seems to me impossible as yet to put together any connected story of the Battle of Jutland. The only facts that seem certain are that both sides lost heavily (the Boches worse than ours, I expect), and that British superiority on the seas, and consequently the maintenance of the blockade, remains in statu quo antea. I am quite prepared to find, when the true facts come out, that it was a deathless story of heroism on the British part, and that in a fight with a foe about six times his strength Beatty covered himself with glory.

Lord Kitchener's death was terribly tragic. There ought to be stringent inquiries as to the ways and means by which the Boches were enabled to sink H.M.S. Hampshire. On the other hand, I can see that it is possible that the whole thing was a woefully unfortunate accident. To have one's name coupled with "Kitchener's Army"—a title alone which should pass K.'s name down to posterity—is no small honour.[Back to Contents]

WITH A SUPPLY COLUMN

In June Lieut. Paul Jones, much to his chagrin, was transferred from the 9th Cavalry Brigade to the Divisional Supply Column. His letters will show how much he resented this change. (Certain words and figures omitted from the following letter are the result of excisions made by the Press Bureau censorship. They do not appear to have been made on any intelligible principle.)

June 12th, 1916.

I have been transferred from my old post of Requisitioning Officer to Supply Officer, Cavalry Division Supply Column. I am frankly and absolutely fed-up with this change! They tell me it is promotion. Well, as I told my colonel, promotion of that kind was not what I wanted. I loved my old job with its facilities for exercising my French, and its comparative variety. Now I am dignified with a job whose main element is seeing to the rations being loaded on to the motor lorries that feed the division. I have not even a chance of exercising my special faculty—that of speaking French. I told my colonel I didn't want the job and beseeched him to leave me with my brigade. He was adamant. My late General wrote a personal letter to the A.S.C. colonel, urging in the strongest terms that I should be left with the brigade. Even to his appeal the only answer vouchsafed was: "The change is equivalent to a promotion for the officer," and it is "necessary for the satisfactory rationing of the division." The colonel told me he was moving me (1) because I was good at figures—me!; (2) because I was hard-working. They don't seem to realise that, if what they said was true, I would have been a far greater asset as a Requisitioning Officer. Oh, it does drive me wild!

We had a brilliantly successful Divisional Horse Show last Saturday. It proved a real triumph for the —— Hussars of our brigade—to my mind the best cavalry regiment in the Army. They romped home easy firsts for the cup presented by the G.O.C. to the regiment that got the greatest number of points in the competitions. The classes for heavy and light chargers brought out some magnificent horses. The well-known C.O. of the —— Hussars was very much in evidence in all these classes. He is a striking personality. With his hard, shrewd, red face, his wonderfully thin legs, light-coloured breeches, beautifully-cut tunic and high hat cocked over his left ear, he looked the personification of the cavalry officer as we read about him in novels. It would seem as though these cavalry officers had been fashioned by nature to sit on a horse. I suppose it is heredity. Certainly they are all of a type.

An interesting unofficial incident was provided by a man in the 4th Dragoon Guards producing a fine bay horse which he wagered 30 to 1 against any officer riding. It was a real American buck-jumper. This challenge was enough for the dare-devil subalterns of the —— Hussars, and one of them, Beach-Hay, a splendid horseman, promptly closed with the offer. For twenty minutes or so he tried to mount, without succeeding; finally he muffled the horse's head in a cloak and got on his back. Then he dug his spurs in and set off at a gallop over the wide plain where the show was being held. All went well for some time until suddenly, without any warning, the horse put his feet together, arched his back, and leapt several feet into the air, at the same time turning to the left sharply. This the horse repeated several times, up hill, down hill, sideways. How Beach-Hay managed to keep his seat no one could tell; it was marvellous the way he stuck on. At last the spirited animal contrived to get the rider well forward on his neck, and then Hay slipped off and the horse was away over the plain at full gallop, riderless. He was chased and caught at last after a long run. Then up stepped a wily old trooper of the 5th Dragoon Guards who used to be a jockey. He saw that the horse was now tired out and got on his back without difficulty, and as the animal by this time was utterly fagged, he found little trouble in keeping his seat. All the honours, however, belonged to the young subaltern.

Did you see that wonderful record of R. B. B. Jones[7] of Dulwich? He shot no fewer than fifteen Boches in a scrap in the craters on the Vimy Ridge before himself being killed. I remember him more than well—a short, sturdy fellow, a very good shot, and an excellent diver and gymnast. He did not go in much for cricket or for football. Poor chap! Yet such a death, I think, is far more to be coveted than an ignoble life far from danger and risk. I often think of those lines of Adam Lindsay Gordon:

No game was ever yet worth a rap for a rational man to play,
Into which no accident, no mishap, could possibly find its way.

June 16th, 1916.

I have had another fit of the blues over this wretched transfer. Why should it be given to all the fellows I know to be in the thick of real fighting—a life which anyone should be proud to live—while to me, aged twenty, standing six feet, about forty inches round the chest, Rugby footballer, swimmer, fluent French speaker, and Balliol scholar, it is given to load up rations? Loathing this Supply work, I have already applied for a transfer to the Horse Transport Section. Oh! that I had only obeyed the dictates of my own conscience and enlisted in the H.A.C. at the start of the war, instead of staying on at school to get a paltry scholarship which the odds are 10 to 1 on my never being able to use! What I pray for is a job in which the following elements are constantly present: (1) hard work; (2) real brain work, employing, if possible, my knowledge of languages; (3) constant danger, or, at least, the constant chance of it; (4) if possible, horses to ride. For such a job I would willingly give ten years of my life.

June 22nd, 1916.

I am glad to say that I'm not finding my new job so absolutely hopeless as I expected. It is in many ways not at all uninteresting to be attached to a Supply Column. After a long time with men whose one interest in life is horses, I now find myself with men who eat, drink, live and breathe motors. My experience has already taught me that England has a splendid system of mechanical transport. Our column numbers no fewer than 150 lorries, 6 motor-cars, and 20 motor-bikes, and about 600 personnel, not to speak of a big travelling workshop and two or three break-down lorries. When you consider that this is merely the means of supplying one single division, you will faintly realise what a part mechanical transport plays in this war. There is no horse-train to a cavalry division, and the lorries deliver rations direct to the regimental quartermasters, so you stand a good chance of seeing all the fun if with the M.T. My duty is to make arrangements for translating the ration figures rendered daily to me by the Cavalry Brigades into terms of meat, bread, biscuit, forage, etc., and arrange for these to be loaded at railhead on to the lorries; then, in company with the M.T. officer of the day, to take these rations up to the units, at the same time obtaining the next day's feeding strength from the Brigade Supply Officers. This particular M.T. column delivered rations in the front line trenches back in 1914, and once a portion of it was captured by the Boches and recaptured by the 18th Hussars.

The M.T. officers are a very efficient lot, and know their job from A to Z. Among them is Captain Hugh Vivian, a member of the famous firm of Vivian & Son, of Swansea and Landore, so near to our ancestral home. He is O.C. to the section of lorries to which I am attached—a most intellectual man of charming manners, who has travelled all over Europe and speaks French and German fluently. He is one of the ablest men I have met in the Army and I find him one of the best of fellows. He may have to leave us shortly, because his thorough knowledge of the metal trades has marked him out to the authorities as a man invaluable for the production of munitions at home.

You have to be with a Supply Column in order to get some idea of the vast quantities of food that are sent up daily to the Front. Never have I seen such quantities—innumerable quarters of meat, tons of bully, crates of biscuits, and cheese, butter, jam, sugar, tea galore. When you remember that all this food has been transported across the Channel, and much of it previously imported from foreign countries into England, you begin to comprehend the value of sea-power.

I am told that the Cavalry Brigade have had to fix up a special interpreter to assist in the requisitioning work since my departure! "Verbum sat sapienti"! Why the authorities should give a man nearly a year's training in one job and then shift him to something else, without reference to his faculties, experience, or wishes, I simply can't tell. Still, there it is, and we must assume that they know best.

Early in July began the great battles of the Somme, when our New Army displayed before an admiring world its magnificent fighting qualities.

July 9th, 1916.

Things have been moving "a few" (as the Yanks say) on this front, haven't they? Let no one, however, delude himself with the belief that the business can be done in five minutes. Things in general in this war have a habit of moving slowly; also the enemy is undoubtedly well defended. Some of his dug-outs are 30 and 40 feet deep, with machine-guns on electric hoists, etc. The wily Boche has not wasted his time during his twenty odd months on this front. But what a relief it is to get back to action after so many months of sitting still!

I have seen numbers of wounded go through the various railheads. These cases were comparatively light wounds, the serious cases being removed by motor ambulance. But many of the gallant chaps I saw seemed in considerable pain. They were sent off in batches as soon as possible to a seaport, the returning supply trains being utilised for this purpose. Every one was in an incredible state of grime. It is the griminess of modern warfare that strikes me as its most characteristic feature.

For a whole fortnight I have lived, moved and had my being in a motor-lorry. I found it quite comfortable, though it was not inside the body of the vehicle that I had my dwelling. You see the lorries are almost always full of rations ready for delivery; so I slept in the driver's seat, and found it quite tolerable. It is just like the driver's seat on a motor-bus; in fact, many of the lorries are old London General omnibuses converted. Personally, I never wish for anything better, least of all on active service. There was a cushion and I had my blanket bag. What more could a man want?

The Ulster Division did remarkably well in the recent fighting. I am not surprised, for I saw them training in England, and was impressed by their toughness—hard-bitten, short, powerfully built men, who took things very seriously.

I can't tell you with what joy and pride I learnt that Lloyd George had been made Minister for War! I regard him as the outstanding personality of the age. Granted that he is sometimes rash, granted that he does not always master the details of the problem he is dealing with, granted that he sometimes propounds schemes before they are ripe; yet against that place (1) his wonderful personality, (2) his boundless vitality and energy, (3) his heartfelt sympathy for the downtrodden ones of the world, (4) his wonderful ideas and ideals, (5) his quickness of intelligence, (6) his ardent patriotism, (7) his remarkable powers of oratory, and (8) his almost uncanny gift of seeing into the future—and you have a man whose superior it would indeed be hard to find. Nietzsche would have welcomed him as his superman incarnate! I have never wavered in my admiration for L. G. Even when he was in hot water over Marconis, I stuck to him. Anyhow, was there ever a man who was absolutely perfect? Let us, for Heaven's sake, judge a man on his great points, and not "crab the goods" by always emphasising his weaknesses. Lloyd George is the man whom the Germans have more cause to fear than all the rest of the Cabinet or any of our authorities, civil or military.

July 17th, 1916.

In that mysterious quarter known as the back of the Front the motor-lorry is omnipresent, especially at a time like this. Wherever you go you see motor-lorries carrying food, ammunition, telegraphic appliances, barbed wire, gas cylinders, clothing, coal; in short, every sort and kind of article necessary to the service of an army in the field. Sometimes they are even used to carry up troops and to bring down wounded. During the Loos push, for instance, this column was hurriedly requisitioned to take up a Yorkshire battalion to the Hohenzollern Redoubt.

I was much interested in Kittermaster's last letter published in The Alleynian—a very characteristic bit of writing. There were very few fellows or masters either who ever got at Kitter's inner nature. He was always somewhat of a mystery to most people. This was accentuated by his taciturn temperament, his rather distant manner, and short, brusque way of speaking. But he certainly was one of the very best masters I can remember at Dulwich, and of the Corps he was a wonderful O.C. There have been many tributes to Kitter, but I scarcely think that people have done full justice in the obituary notices to Nightingale, the other Dulwich master who has given his life in the war—a sterling chap if ever there was one.

So Howard,[8] as well as R. B. B. Jones, now figures in the death roll! It seems but yesterday that we three were ragging together in the swimming baths, of which both these chaps were great habituÉs.

I am very sad, too, at the death of A. W. Fischer.[9] He and I got our 1st XV colours together in Killick's year, and were the best of friends throughout his last two years at school. He was a smallish, active forward of the Irish type, a splendid hard worker all through the game. He and I never on any occasion got crocked, and we played in every 1st XV match for two consecutive seasons, 1912-1914. He was a shrewd fellow, too, and well read, particularly in the classics. He had a very deep, rich voice, and used to do well every time in the competition for the Anstie Memorial Reading Prize. As a soldier he would have been almost ideal, as he was a rare good leader, and a devil-may-care chap who feared nothing. It is inexpressibly sad that he should have been taken away thus. And I haven't even seen him since we parted at the end of the summer term, 1914, just before this holocaust started. We shook hands on saying "Good-bye" on the cricket ground, he proceeding towards the school buildings, and I towards the pavilion. He was to have gone to Cambridge the ensuing October, and we had been talking of his chances of a "Blue," and if we would be able to play against each other in the coming season. But what use to raise up the vanished ghosts of the past? It only makes the tragedy more heart-breaking. It is up to us to see that these lives have not been laid down in vain.

July 25th, 1916.

I was up yesterday in the region where we won ground from the Germans, seeing to a dump of rations. The chief impression I brought away with me was one of all-pervading dust. I have witnessed a few scenes of destruction in my time out here, but nothing to match a certain village in this area. Vermelles was bad enough, but this place is even worse. Everything in it has been razed to the ground. Except for an occasional square foot of masonry protruding out of the earth, there is nothing to suggest that there was ever a village here at all. In one old German trench I saw a cross with the following words written on it: "Hier liegen zwei Franz. Krieger," which interpreted would be: "Here lie two French warriors," a tribute by the enemy to two Frenchmen buried here earlier in the war before we took over this portion of the line.

Alas! another old pal of mine has been killed, namely W. J. Henderson,[10] a captain of the Loyal North Lancashires. In the old days at Dulwich he did well in football. He got into the 2nd XV under Evans, and frequently played for the 1st XV. He was also decidedly clever, and won a classical scholarship at Oxford. The war is taking a frightful toll of the best of our race.

July 27th, 1916.

I should like to have your permission to apply for a transfer to the Royal Field Artillery. The procedure will be quite simple. I will send in my application to the O.C., who will forward it with the Medical Officer's health certificate to the higher A.S.C. authorities; then it will go forward in the usual course. If the people in charge think my record satisfactory and my eyesight good enough they will take me. I want to give the authorities a chance to take or refuse me for a really combatant corps. In this way, whether refused or accepted, I shall have satisfied my conscience. After all, the doctor will state on the medical certificate exactly what my vision is. So there will be no question of trying to deceive the authorities. They will have before them all the facts re my record and my eyesight. If they then refuse me, well and good. I shall accept the inevitable. If they take me, so much the better. I have had several chats with the Officer Commanding the Supply Column on the subject, and explained to him that I was utterly fed up with grocery work.

The scenes I have witnessed during and since this great attack—the Somme battles—have confirmed my resolution to go into the fighting line. You who have not seen the horrors of a modern campaign cannot possibly know the feelings of a young man who, while the real business of war is going on at his very elbow (for we are not far from the centre of things), and who is longing to be in the thick of the fighting, is yet condemned to look after groceries and do work which a woman could do probably a great deal better.

Oh! it is awful. And all this, mind you, with the knowledge that all the chaps one used to know are in the thick of it.

To sum up, I recognise that I have a serious physical defect. I shall not attempt to conceal it from the authorities; it would be wrong to do so. But I have also many physical, and I think some mental, advantages over the average man. Moreover, I am young and exceptionally strong. I give you my word of honour that in making my application I shall not conceal the facts about my short sight. Having lodged my application for transfer, it will be for the authorities to say whether they will take me or leave me. Please, please, give your approval to my putting in such an application. Occasions come to every man when he has to make up his mind for himself and by himself—as I did about my move to the Modern side of Dulwich. Was that a failure?

August 8th, 1916.

I am more thankful than I can say to have your permission to apply for transfer to the R.F.A. Since I wrote to you a circular has come from G.H.Q. stating that officers for the artillery are wanted urgently. They propose to send home two hundred officers a month till further notice for training at the Artillery School. I want, if possible, to avoid going home to train. I would like to go through my training course here, but I fear beggars can't be choosers, and in the case of a highly technical arm like the gunners the training may have to be done in England. Everybody with us is feeling restive; the inaction that prevails is getting beyond a joke.

As for the A.S.C., I consider that my particular branch of the service is overstocked. In itself the mere fact of the work not appealing to me (though I absolutely loathe it) would not be decisive. It is because I am convinced that I could do better work in other directions that I am longing for a transfer. Even the transport side of the A.S.C. I would not object to. It is the Supply, or grocery, side that I loathe. Had I remained in the post of Requisitioning Officer, with its variety of work and the possibility of exercising my linguistic gifts, I would have been moderately content. But in my heart and soul I have always longed for the rough-and-tumble of war as for a football match. What I have seen of the war out here has not frightened me in the least, but rather made me keener than ever to take part in the fighting. It is all very well to be an "organiser of victory," but it does not appeal to me, even if I had the particular type of mind necessary for success at it. But I am not a good business man, and the details of business bore me stiff. On the other hand, it is my passionate desire to share the hardships and dangers of this war. It is not only my own desire and my own temperament that influence me, but the example of others. I pick up my newspaper to-day, and what do I see? Why, that a fellow that sat in the same form-room as I did two years back has won the V.C., paying, it is true, with his life for the honour. But what a glorious end! I mean, of course, my namesake, Basil Jones, the first Dulwich V.C., of whose achievement one can scarcely speak without a lump in the throat. Likewise I see my friend S. H. Killick, to whom I gave football colours, has been wounded. And think of the men who have fallen! Men of the stamp of Julian Grenfell, D. O. Barnett,[11] Rupert Brooke, Roland Philipps, R. G. Garvin, and W. J. Henderson have not hesitated to give up for their country all the brilliant gifts of character and intellect with which they would have enriched England had it not been for the war. The effect on me is as a trumpet call. All the old Welsh fighting blood comes surging up in me and makes me say, "Short sight or no short sight, I will prove my manhood!" If it should be my fate to get popped off—well, it is we younger men without dependants whose duty it is to take the risk. You will get some inkling of my feeling when you read in Garvin's father's article how his son, when sent off to the Divisional H.Q., lost all his spirits and begged to be sent back to the old battalion, and how, when he did get back to it, "his letters recovered their old clear tone." How well I can understand that! My application for a transfer to the R.F.A. has now gone in. If I am refused I shall be broken-hearted, but my conscience will be clear. If I am accepted, it will be the happiest day of my life.

A few words now about some personal experiences. At a certain village not far from here are a number of Boche prisoners. Every day they go out to shovel refuse into army wagons, and then unload these wagons elsewhere on to refuse heaps. It is a daily occurrence to see a Boche mount up on the box beside the English driver, and off they go—if the Boche can speak English—chatting merrily as if there had never been a war. I have even seen Tommy hand over the reins to his captive, who cheerfully takes them and drives the wagon to its destination, while the real driver sits back with folded arms. That will show you how far the British soldier cultivates the worship of Hate. It is small incidents of this kind, unofficial and even illegal though they may be, that make one realise the true secret of Britain's greatness—her magnanimity and her kindliness.

August 14th, 1916.

The Dulwich Army List makes very interesting reading, though I notice some omissions and errors in it. Everyone seems to be doing something. It is as good a record as that of any other school or institution of any kind in the country. I have not yet had any news about my move to the Gunners, but the application has only been in a comparatively short time, and these things have to take their course. I know that my application was duly forwarded and recommended by my C.O. to the Divisional authorities. I shall be very much surprised if I don't get the transfer. By Jove! if I only can. You cannot imagine anyone being so fed up with anything as I am with my present job. Loathing is not the word for the feeling with which I regard it.

I am reading Burke on the French Revolution. It is brilliant writing, to be sure, but Burke is too biased and has not complete knowledge of his subject. You would think from the way he writes that the "Ancien RÉgime" was an ideal system of government which brought to France nothing but prosperity! Had he possessed the knowledge of Arthur Young, who had examined social and economic conditions in France with piercing eyes, he would doubtless have modified his views. Moreover, Burke forgets the maxim he himself laid down in his speeches on the American Revolution—that large masses of men do not, as a rule, rebel without some reason for so doing. It seems to me that Burke's heart and his inborn prejudices have run away with his head. Though he scoffs at people who try to work out systems of government on the lines of idealism, yet his own views are often purely idealistic, especially on the subject of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, whom he apparently regarded as a pair of demigods!

The style of the book is splendidly oratorical, sometimes too much so, but there are passages in it which it would be difficult to match even in the splendid realm of English prose—for example, his great panegyric on the State. On England, too, he is very fine. Many people to-day might do worse than read his defence of the British Constitution, though I personally disagree with some points in his argument. One sentence from this passage might be addressed to our Allies very appropriately to-day—"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposing beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field."

Unfortunately the British people do bear a strong resemblance to great cattle, and it requires a Lloyd George to awaken the sleeping animals and galvanise them into movement.

Recently I got hold of a volume of de Musset. There is some beautiful verse in it, especially the "Ode to Lamartine," in which he has a great tribute to Byron.

Could you send me out the programme of the coming Promenade Concert season? I would give anything to hear Wagner and Beethoven once more. My allegiance to these giants, as to Shakespeare and Milton, grows stronger every day. The appalling tawdry trash that passes for music nowadays, and the degradation of art and literature which seems to be the feature of the twentieth century, intensify my loyalty to great musicians and noble writers. What is the cause of this decadence? There is surely enough inspiration for genius in this colossal war, when every day the spirit of man is winning new triumphs and deeds of extraordinary heroism are being performed.[Back to Contents]

IN THE SOMME BATTLEFIELD

In August, 1916, Paul Jones was relieved of his uncongenial duties with the Supply Column and appointed to command an ammunition working-party located at an advanced railhead in the terrain of the Somme battles.

August 21st, 1916.

I am delighted to tell you that I have been temporarily posted to a job of real interest and responsibility, having been given the command of a working-party composed of infantry, artillery, and A.S.C. men, whose function it is to load and unload ammunition at an important railhead not far from the Front. We are about 150 in all, and a very happy family. We live in tents and work under the orders of the Railhead Ordnance authorities. There is a vast amount of work, and it goes on continuously, at present from 4 A.M. to 9 P.M. daily, and sometimes throughout the night as well. It is a revelation to see the immense quantities of explosives, etc., that are sent up. I have nothing further to report about the R.F.A. transfer, but my C.O. has assured me that if my application is not successful I shall be able to return shortly to the Cavalry Brigade in my old capacity as Requisitioning Officer.

This working ammunition-party of which I am in command is located in a little town well in the swirl of war, with the guns booming in the near distance most of the day and night. The "unit under my command," to put it in official language, lives in a field by the railhead. We have a pair of first-rate sergeants (R.H.A. and Infantry) and various very sound A.S.C. n.c.o.s in charge. Everything goes merrily as a wedding-bell. A gunner officer looks after the administrative welfare, pay, etc., of the artillerymen, but the discipline and command of the unit as a whole devolve on yours truly.

Next door to us across the line there is a concentration camp of Boche prisoners. They work on the railway all day shovelling stones in and out of trucks and lorries. To the eternal credit of England the treatment the prisoners receive, the food supplied to them, and the conditions under which they live are all of the very best. They have their being in tents within a barbed wire enclosure, not too crowded, and have excellent washing facilities (hot baths once a week), good food and conveniences for its preparation, including huge camp kettles for cooking—in short, every comfort possible. The work they do is hard, but no harder than that many of our own fellows have to do in the normal course of events. The considerate way in which our prisoners are treated is a great tribute to British chivalry. An old French soldier, watching them one day in their camp, said to me: "Vous les traitez trop bien ces salots." I replied: "Oui, mais c'est comme Ça que l'Angleterre fait la guerre—avec les mains toujours propres."

I was grieved to hear of the death of Lieutenant Ivor Rees, of Llanelly. He was a great friend of Arthur and Tom. It is awful, there is no doubt about it, the sacrifice of these lives cut short in their prime, but they are not wasted; of that I am convinced. Besides:

One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.

Lloyd George's Eisteddfod speech was very stirring. I like that phrase, "The blinds of Britain are not drawn down." I see the papers are discussing Ministerial changes. I hope whatever happens that Lloyd George will remain at the War Office—it is the place where his personality is wanted. I am reading two interesting French books: Émile Faguet's "Short History of French Literature" and Dumas' "Vingt Ans AprÈs." I wish you would send me Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," or one of Hegel's books. This evening I listened to Beethoven's "Egmont" overture—what a glorious work it is! Keep your eye for me on any books dealing with Beethoven or the immortal Richard.

September 2nd, 1916.

I am still in command of the ammunition working-party, and, entailing as it does real work and responsibility, am enjoying it hugely. All our men seem very happy. Their rations and living conditions are excellent. We have our own canteen, which does a great trade. It is a bad day if the canteen fails to take 250 francs, although it is open only from 12 to 2 and from 6 to 8 as per regulations.

We get our stuff from the nearest branch of the Expeditionary Force canteens, a military unit which does a colossal business at the back of the Front. It has depÔts almost as large as those of the A.S.C. A sergeant-major of the nearest branch of the E.F.C. tells me that they calculate that at one depÔt they take more money in a day than Harrod's Stores do in a week. The place is chock-a-block from morning to night, and outside there is always waiting a string of lorries, mess-carts, wagons, limbers, from all over the place. The part played by the E.F.C. in the war is by no means unimportant. It is a regular military unit, with officers, n.c.o.s and men (in khaki, of course), run under the authority of the War Office and subject to military law. Profits on sales go to the purchase of fresh stock, and I believe, in part, to the Military Canteens Fund at the War Office. The whole thing is run by the Director of Supply and Transport at the W.O., and is commanded out here by an A.S.C. major. It is difficult not to make profits on canteens; even in our comparatively small one, we constantly find ourselves saddled with more money than is required, and this although the prices charged to the men are the lowest possible. One great merit of the canteens is that they prevent the men from being "rooked" by unscrupulous civilians, who, I regret to say, are to be found in force in some of these French towns and villages.

The military canteen movement on its present huge scale has only been possible to us because of (1) the comparatively high rates of pay in the British Army; (2) the command of the sea, making transport from England simple and easy; (3) the inexhaustible reservoirs of supply and manufacture that exist within the British Empire. There can be no doubt about it that the path of the British soldier in this war has been made as easy as it is possible to make it—an incalculable advantage to a nation that has had to create a great voluntary Army in a comparatively short space of time. Whatever faults the military authorities may have committed in other directions, they have kept steadily in view the Napoleonic maxim, "An army moves on its stomach."

The Boche prisoners round about here work energetically. They must, I fancy, be amazed themselves at the manner in which they are treated—the abundance of food, the entire absence of rancour on our part, and the general conditions under which they work and live. Actually, they get their Sunday afternoons off. Some of them have been given a little plot of land close to the internment camp, where they are busy gardening in their leisure time. In the camp they have all sorts of work-tables and tools, and you often see some of them doing carpentering after their day's work is done. The prisoners stroll about the camp and its environs at will, and the men on guard are continually chatting and joking with them. The ration of the prisoners includes fresh meat and bread every day, and a supply of tobacco and cigarettes once a week. It is much to the credit of Britain that her captives in war should be treated with so much generosity. Don't let the Government abandon this policy of broad magnanimity because of the noisy clamour of armchair reprisalists at home. By the way, these Boche prisoners observe the rules of discipline even in their captivity, and when British or French officers pass by they stand respectfully to attention. Most of the prisoners are big chaps. If you have not read it, let me recommend to you a book by John Buchan called "The Thirty-nine Steps." To my mind it is the cleverest detective story I have read since the exploits of Sherlock Holmes. It is in a way a sort of enlarged version of an earlier story by Buchan that appeared in Blackwood's Magazine called the "Power House." As in the "Power House," the chief villain is merely hinted at; he is only fully revealed in the last page. Throughout the rest of the story he is one of those genial, cheery old men who are always puffing cigars and drinking whisky. The incidents take place in England and are connected with a series of events that precipitated the present war. I enjoyed the book and admired the ingenuity with which the plot is worked out. The writing is vigorous and there is no sloppy sentimentality.

September 6th, 1916.

Yesterday my working party had orders suddenly to shift its quarters to a spot farther up the line. Having struck camp we started off about 2 P.M. in motor char-À-bancs and lorries. After about two hours' plunging about in roads that were like quagmires we arrived at our destination, a newly formed railhead, not far from the battle line. It is situated on a sort of plateau. The surrounding country is thick with guns. In the past twelve hours there has been a terrific bombardment, the guns booming incessantly. Even Loos, which wasn't so bad while it lasted, pales into insignificance in comparison. At night the sky reminds one of the Crystal Palace firework show in its palmiest days. It is a fine place this from the point of view of health, being high up and open to the fresh air and the sunshine. I am feeling absolutely splendid both in health and spirits. It is a treat to be up where things are happening.

September 12th, 1916.

Pursuant to orders from the Division, I marched my party up to join another working party that is engaged on duty whose scope extends as far as the most recently gained ground. We are quartered along with a lot of cavalry at a point in the area captured, and are just in front of our big guns. The country all around is a veritable abomination of desolation. Its surface is intersected at innumerable points with ditches, in which much splendid English blood has flowed. Here and there, looking very forlorn, are stark and blasted stumps that used to be woods. Above and around the ceaseless voice of the guns fills the air with its clamour. Steel helmets and gas helmets are the standing order for us when on duty.

Whom do you think I met this morning to my great delight? No less a person than Peaker,[12] now an officer of the K.R.R.s. He was just back from a certain spot in the line, where his lot had "gone over" with good results. The story of his experiences occasioned heartburnings to myself as regards the part I've been playing in the war behind the battle line. He had recently met Cartwright, G. T. K. Clarke, and the elder Dawson—all old Alleynians, who have had the privilege of participating in the "push." On the advice of the Divisional A.A. and Q.M.G., I am reluctantly leaving over the question of transfer to the R.F.A. till things get more settled. At present I am away from the Division, and it is difficult, almost impossible in fact, for me to arrange the interviews with the Medical and Artillery authorities that are necessary as a preliminary to transfer. Still, as I am getting plenty of interesting work at my present job I don't mind waiting.

September 14th, 1916.

Last night I was detailed to go up with a working party engaged in operations on the very site of the last great battle. The whole business took place under cover of darkness. After an hour and a half's trudging, up hill and down dale, we got to the allotted spot and began our work. The night was alive with noises—ear-splitting reports of big guns, the shrieks and whistles of shells in transit, and the rat-tat-tat of machine-guns. Now and again the darkness would be illuminated by the glare of star-shells. I think I mentioned to you before the mournful desolation of this war-scarred countryside—land without grass, without trees, without houses, nothing more now than a wilderness, with yawning shell craters innumerable, and here and there blackened and branchless stumps that used to be trees. We were near the site of a village famous in the annals of British arms. A single brick of that village would be worth its weight in gold as a souvenir. As we worked in the darkness the air was polluted by a horrible stench, and as soon as one's eyes got accustomed to the gloom there became visible silent twisted forms that used to be men. But enough; I dare not tell you of the ghastly scenes on that historic battlefield; it would give you nightmare for weeks to come if I did.

Out here one gets into a callous state, in which these things, while unpleasant, are scarcely noticed in the whirl and confusion of events. Personally at the time, in traversing this battlefield, I was slightly horrified at first, but chiefly conscious only of the frightful odour of mortality. It is on thinking the thing over in retrospect and with cold blood that the real sense of horror begins to creep into one's soul. Such is the so-called "ennobling influence of war"! As I went over this grim battlefield, with all its tragic sights, I reflected bitterly on the triumph of twentieth-century civilisation.

Our work occupied us about five hours, and we trekked for home before dawn. Through the night there was movement and activity—ration parties, walking wounded, stretcher-bearers, reliefs, all moving silently in the darkness like so many phantoms. I have picked up a number of souvenirs from the old Boche trenches, including a Boche steel helmet, with a shrapnel hole in the side as big as a crown-piece. Its wearer must have "gone West" instanter.

September 21st, 1916.

In the last few days two other officers and myself have been in charge of working parties. Starting out at 8 A.M., it is our habit to proceed on foot to places distant anything up to three and four miles, returning in the late afternoon. Yesterday we got to our destination about 9 A.M., and found the Boche "crumping" with fair regularity the vicinity of an apology for a road. Though little more than a muddy track, and only recently captured by us, this road is full of traffic most hours of the day. The "Hun" knows this and acts accordingly. As we were marching gaily up about 9 A.M. he began a "strafe" of the district with pretty heavy shells at intervals of a couple of minutes. Suddenly came a bang about thirty yards in front of us on the road, and he put a beautiful shot almost under the wheels of a lorry, digging a huge crater in the road, into which the crumpled-up chassis subsided with a crash. Fortunately the driver was not there, or for him it would have been a case of "kingdom come." I was at the head of our lot, along with my friend Lieutenant Gardner. We considered what we should do—whether to push straight through to our destination, which was not two hundred yards away, to wait where we were, or split up into small parties. We arranged that he should lead on, while I would wait to see all the column pass and hurry up stragglers. Gardner had not got farther than fifty yards when a six-incher came plonk within a few yards of him. Luckily he and all his lot had time to prostrate themselves, and there were no casualties. I was gathering the remainder of the party, when whew! crash! and I felt a terrific detonation at my very elbow, and for a moment was stunned and deafened. A Boche shell had pitched not five yards behind me. How I was not blown to smithereens will always be a marvel to me. As I staggered about under the shock of the explosion I could feel bits of steel and earth pattering on my helmet like rain. After the first momentary shock I was in full possession of my wits, and I quickly realised that, for the moment at least, I had lost all sense of hearing in my right ear. But this was a small price to pay for the escape. Such a miracle would assuredly never happen again. A few hours later I had regained a good deal of hearing power, but it is not right yet. Experts, however, tell me that this effect will pass off in time. A fragment of the shell passed through the right sleeve of my heavy overcoat. I am glad to say we had no casualties at all, though the enemy kept on dropping heavy stuff round about us all day.

Well, cheer-oh! I am keeping as fit as a horse. My appetite, I regret to say, gets bigger every day.

September 27th, 1916.

Our working party having finished its duties, I have now been appointed Requisitioning Officer to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. This is much better than that horrible job with the Supply Column. The war news is splendid, but some glorious men have "gone West." We are paying a big price for victory. The death of Raymond Asquith is a great tragedy. A brilliant life extinguished, one that gave promise of great things. I had a shock to-day on reading in the paper that my old friend H. Edkins,[13] who took a Junior Scholarship at Dulwich in the same year as I did, is reported among the missing. He was an able and gifted fellow. Do you remember how well he sang at the school concert in December, 1914? With all my heart I hope he's all right. I wish you would get for me Professor Moulton's book, "The Analytic Study of Literature."[Back to Contents]

WITH THE 2nd CAVALRY BRIGADE

October 3rd, 1916.

Here I am a Requisitioning Officer again, this time for another Cavalry Brigade. I was sorry not to get back to my old comrades. Still, it is a change to work with new regiments. This Cavalry Brigade is a famous body of troops. To it belongs the honour of having been the first lot of Britishers in action in the war. While I like my duties, I am beginning to feel restive, and am longing to get back to the real battle zone. What think you of our new war machines? [Tanks were first employed on September 15, 1916.—Editor.] I have had many opportunities of studying them on the move. One would scarcely believe it possible they could go over ground such as I have seen them comfortably traverse. No obstacle seems insurmountable to them. They are quaint-looking things, but, in spite of the Press correspondents, they are no more like to, or suggestive of, primeval monsters than a cow resembles a chaff-cutter.

Ireland is an enigma and no mistake. The man who settles the Irish problem will go down to history. The difficulty would appear to be to effect any rapprochement of the English and Irish national points of view, these having been determined by the different environments of the two races. In national life as in nature the law of natural selection operates.

I rejoice to say that I've got two horses again, one a big brown horse, very strong and a hard worker, the other a powerful bay mare. Neither is particularly good-looking, but I've learnt from experience that soundness and strength in a horse are more to be desired than good looks, especially when campaigning. It is seldom that you can combine all the qualities. Breed and blood tell in horses. A well-bred horse will outlast a common one, because it tries harder. What you want is a judicious mixture of breed and strength. My two horses are pretty well-bred and have great strength, and always try hard; so I'm pretty well off, I reckon.

I observe that those blighted Zeppelins have been about England again. But really the Zepp. is a colossal failure, whether you regard it from the point of view of doing military injury, or damage likely in any way to help Germany in the war, such as impairing the morale of the British people. The best reply to the Zepps. is being given day and night on the Somme, where hundreds of thousands of Boches must at present be wishing they had never been born. I am surprised they have stuck our bombardment as they have done, but I am bound to say that the Boche is by no means a coward.

I am at present deeply immersed in Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." It is a great work, and not by any means one to be read in a hurry. Every line is charged full with deep thinking. It appeals to me intensely. Kant's was a gigantic mind.

November 3rd, 1916.

Our Cavalry Brigade has been on the move for some time. In these circumstances I am always busily employed. Every day that we move I go on with the brigade advance parties, go round the billets that the troops are going to occupy, and make all arrangements with the French inhabitants for a plentiful supply of fuel, straw and forage to be available for the troops when they arrive. The weather recently has been the reverse of clement. The first stages of the move were accomplished in pitiless rain, the more recent ones in weather fairly dry, but bitterly cold. Not that vicissitudes of weather worry me. I never enjoy life so much as when I'm fully occupied with hard work like that I am now doing, which is really useful and responsible.

The question of Ireland remains a perplexing one. We have two Irishmen in our mess, one a Unionist, the other a Nationalist. The impression one gets from them at least is the hopelessness of our being ever able to settle the Irish problem. It is largely, of course, a question of temperament. The Ulsterman with us is all for the "strong hand" policy, but I pointed out to him the absurdity of our adopting Prussian tactics, especially at this moment. He agreed, but steadfastly maintained that, judging purely from results, Balfour was the best Chief Secretary Ireland has ever had. He frankly admitted that Carson made himself liable to be tried for high treason at the time of the Larne gunrunning. He also agreed with me that to administer an irritant to a man recovering from brain fever is a very risky policy. In fact, we came round to the old conclusion in which, to quote "Rasselas," "nothing is concluded." It is a thousand pities that so able, attractive and intelligent a race as the Irish should have such an accursedly impossible temperament. It is the unimaginative, easygoing, supremely practical Englishman who is the ideal governor in this foolish world, not the hot-headed idealist.

November 10th, 1916.

I am starting off to-day on rather a big, albeit safe job, namely, purchasing all the hay and straw in a certain area on behalf of the Cavalry Division. It is an important commission and will take me about a week to execute.

We have arrived at another stagnant period in the war. That was a happy definition of it as "long spells of acute boredom punctuated by short spells of acute fear."

What brilliant soldiers the French are! It amazes me that they should be able to "strafe" the Boches so constantly, and at points where one would least expect them to. The recapture of Douaumont was, in my opinion, one of the best bits of work in the war. Of course, the French Army is superbly generalled, and it has a military tradition second to none in the world. A nation that can boast of men like Vauban, Turenne, CondÉ, Soult, MassÉna, Ney, and Macdonald (I don't mention Napoleon, because he was not really a Frenchman at all) has a glorious military tradition worth living up to.

On the other hand, I cannot withhold praise from the wonderful organisation of the Boches. The way in which they repeatedly take the bull by the horns and attack the encircling ring of their enemies at some new point is extraordinary. Where on earth did they find men for their Rumanian campaign? There can be no doubt that they are a very stiff foe to beat, and they are not easily "rattled" by failures or defeats. But it is undeniable that they were badly "rattled" on the Somme. British achievements there enable one to look with great hope to the future, when our full strength will be in the field. Man for man the German soldier is no match for the British Tommy.

I was amazed to read in the papers that the Dulwich 1st XV have been beaten by Merchant Taylors'. If that really happened, then truly it is a case of "Ichabod," and "The glory is departed from Israel."

November 17th, 1916.

I am still detached temporarily from Headquarters, travelling about in a motor-car for the purpose of securing local supplies of forage and straw in the area about to be occupied by the Cavalry Division. It is very interesting work, with a large human element in it; but one has difficulty in getting these French farmers and dealers to agree to our prices for their commodities. Almost always they want much more for them than is prescribed in our schedule of official prices. Taking note of all refusals to sell to us, because our prices are too low, I have to-day applied for permission to requisition the goods in these cases—that is, to take the stuff over compulsorily, handing to the owner a note entitling him to draw so much money from the British Requisition Office, the amount being settled by us and not by the farmer or dealer. That is the way the French Military authorities do things. They, of course, are dealing with their own people. It is different with us, and French farmers and peasants think they are entitled to exact all they can from the English. The French authorities, acting through their A.S.C. or the local mayors, periodically call on the communes to supply them with so much forage, straw and other commodities. These quantities have to be supplied nolens volens and at prices fixed by the French Army. I can see ourselves being forced reluctantly to adopt the same procedure, at least in some cases, though it is much more pleasant for both parties when we can buy amicably and pay cash on the spot.

A number of the farmers with whom I had to deal recently are "permissionaires"—they get pretty regular leave in the French Army. The peasant stock of the North of France has a knack of producing good fighting men—they are an unromantic race, but amazingly industrious, shrewd, and very tough.

My car-driver is a Welshman from Pontypridd. He is one of the best drivers I've struck out here and a first-rate fellow to boot. He has played a lot of Rugby, having turned out several times on the wing for Cardiff. He is quite young, not much older than myself. Like most Welshmen, he has literary tastes, and has a real gift for reciting poetry.

The Alleynian duly to hand. Its monthly War record for the old school makes splendid, albeit mournful reading. How poignant to read the record in dates of Edkins's life: "Born, 1896; left school, September, 1915; killed in action, 1916." Judging from the official account, Frank Hillier[14] must have done great work in earning the Military Cross. I see also that K. R. Potter has got the M.C. He is one of the most brilliant men Dulwich has produced. He was one of the two men to win a Balliol Scholarship in Classics in the second of those historic two years when we got two in each year—a record equalled by few schools and beaten by none. J. S. Mann, who took a Balliol Scholarship at the same time as Potter, has been wounded in the trenches.

Deep was my grief to read of the death in action of R. F. Mackinnon,[15] M.C., one of the finest forwards and captains who has ever worn the blue-and-black jersey. He was captain of the first fifteen in my first year at the school, 1908-9, in which we had a pack of forwards of strong physique and whole-hearted courage. Arthur Gilligan, who was in the same battalion as Mackinnon, told me he was absolutely without fear, and was continually working up little "strafes" of the Boches on his own.

November 22nd, 1916.

I have been up to the neck in work, having temporarily to do what is really three men's work—Brigade Supply Officer, Brigade Requisitioning Officer, and Divisional Forage Purchasing Officer—the last a newly-created post under the direction of the Corps H.Q. It is no joke personally arranging the payments for all the forage in an area fifteen square miles by ten. To-day I found it impossible to continue and do the work efficiently without assistance. It is not so much the getting the forage as the amount of accounting that is involved. I fear I am a poor accountant at best, and the figuring involved in the new scheme (there are five enormous Army forms to fill up weekly, in addition to the ordinary business side of the transactions) has been taxing my energies and has taken up my time long after working hours. Major Knox, Senior Supply Officer of the Division (an old Dulwich man, at one time the Oxford Cricket Captain, and a splendid fellow to boot), spent about six hours to-day with me in completely checking our available resources. The fact is that the hay ration from England has been very considerably reduced for some reason, and we have to make up the deficiency out here, permission having been obtained from the French authorities to purchase and requisition in various Army areas. This permission was for a long time withheld, as the French wanted the local supplies for their own troops.

I am finding the War a boring business; the glamour has decidedly worn off. Oh, if we could but get through the Boche lines! As things are at present, there is no thrill and not much scope for initiative. It is just a sordid affair of mud, shell-holes, corpses, grime and filth. Even in billets the thing remains intensely dull and uninspiring. One just lives, eats, drinks, sleeps, and all apparently to no purpose. The monotony is excessive. My chief function in life seems to be the filling up of endless Army forms. I thoroughly sympathise with the recent protest from military men in the Spectator about the "Military Babu," who is occupying an ever larger and larger place in the life of the Army. There will be a revolt one of these days against the fatuity of this eternal filling up of forms for no conceivable purpose.

It is not only myself, but many of my comrades who are bored by the War. To my mind there are only four really interesting branches in the Army: (1) Flying Corps; (2) Heavy Artillery; (3) Tanks, and (4) Intelligence. It must be intense reaction against the drab monotony of life at the Front that is responsible for the outbreak of frivolity that is said to have been the leading characteristic of life in London and elsewhere of late. The Englishman doesn't like thinking; if he did, he would not be the splendid fighting man that he is. In literature taste had gone to the dogs long before the War, and it seems to me that the War has hastened it on its downward path. It does seem to me a tragic pity that no great and inspiring work has sprung to birth in England from the contemplation of what the men of British race have achieved in this War, enduring such depressing conditions with so much fortitude and doing such glorious deeds whenever there is a chance for action.

November 29th, 1916.

More boredom and an incredible amount of figuring, until I loathe the very sight of pencil and paper. Thanks for parcels. Everyone is so kind that it afflicts me with a sense of shame. Not that any amount of gifts is too lavish for the brave men in the trenches, but for "peace soldiers," like yours truly, it is very different. I am at present living in a beautiful chÂteau at a perfectly safe distance from the Front, in very pleasant country, with a motor-car and two horses at my disposal and every conceivable luxury. And then one is asked about the hardships that one endures! It really is too absurd. I am by no means the only one who feels like this, but I do think it is worse for a Celtic temperament than for an Anglo-Saxon one.

At last there seems to be a chance of escape from this luxurious life, for a circular has just come to hand from the O.C., A.S.C., of the Division, intimating that a number of transfers per month from the A.S.C. to really fighting units has been sanctioned by the War Office, together with a form to be filled up by officers desiring to transfer. Of course, I am putting my name down. I am deliberating whether to go for Infantry, Artillery, or Machine-Gun Corps.

December 8th, 1916.

I was medically examined yesterday, and passed fit for general service. To-day I filled in the application form, applying for (1) Infantry, (2) M.G.C., (3) Royal Artillery. You will doubtless want my reasons for this step. (1) It is obvious that they need Infantry officers most. It is, therefore, clearly the duty of every fit officer to offer his services for the Infantry. I have been passed fit by an entirely impartial medical officer, after a searching medical examination; therefore it is my duty to go. (2) From the personal point of view I have long been most dissatisfied with the part I am playing in the War, and I jump at the chance of a transfer.

I don't pretend to be doing the "young hero" stunt. I am not out for glory. I have probably seen far more of the War as it really is than any other A.S.C. officer in the Division. I know the War for the dull, sordid, murderous thing that it is. I don't expect for a minute to enjoy the trenches. But anything is better than this horrible inaction when all the chaps one knows are undergoing frightful hardships and dangers. For a long time the argument of physical incapacity weighed with me. I was forced to admit that if, on account of defective eyesight, I was not sound for Infantry work, it was better that I should stick to a job for which I was fit than do badly one for which I was not fit. But I have now been passed fit for general service, and this being so I would be a craven to hold back from the fighting-line.

If we are to win this War it will only be through gigantic efforts and great sacrifices. It is the chief virtue of the public-school system that it teaches one to make sacrifices willingly for the sake of esprit de corps. Well, clearly, if the public-school men hold back, the others will not follow. Germany at present [the Germans had recently overrun Rumania] is in the best situation—speaking politically—she has been in since those dramatic days of the advance on Paris. The British effort is only just beginning to bear fruit, and we are called on to strain every nerve in our national body to counteract the superb organisation of the Boches. That can only be done by getting the right man in the right job. Men with special qualifications must be given the chance to exercise them. All A.S.C. officers should be business men; they could perfectly well also be men over military age, as the work demands none of the qualifications of youth. For a young chap like myself, without any special qualification or training, but full of keenness, with good physique and just out of a public school, the trenches are emphatically the place.

Well, anyway, there it is. My application is in, and I am now just waiting for G.H.Q. to accept me for the Infantry. I should not be surprised if I am back home at Christmas in order to train. An excellent recommendation from my C.O. accompanied my transfer papers. I also had a satisfactory interview with the Major-General commanding the Division, who, I believe, added his own recommendation.

December 20th, 1916.

I can't tell you how relieved I was to get the Pater's last letter, and to feel that we see the matter in the same light. It lifted a weight from my mind, as I will frankly admit that I was much worried, torn one way by my conscience and another by the fear that my action would cause displeasure and grief at home. Now, with the Pater's letter in my possession, I can go ahead with a light heart. There can be absolutely no question that I've done the right thing. It is a mere coincidence that my personal feelings have long tended in the same direction. I saw the path of duty before me absolutely clear. Up to date I have never "let you down," and I don't think I shall do so this time.

By the way, in my transfer papers, I have expressly stipulated for a temporary commission, as I have no idea at all of becoming a Regular.

January 1st, 1917.

Hearty wishes for a happy New Year, wishes which always seem to me more serious than the greetings that pass at Christmas time. With most people Christmas is a purely festive season, but with the end of the old year comes the necessity of looking forward to a new period—perhaps to be joyful, perhaps otherwise; anyway, a period on which it is necessary to enter as far as possible with confidence. From the general point of view that is not an easy matter as things stand. I am bound to say I am getting pessimistic about the War. The chief trouble is the total lack of action that characterises it. This grovelling in ditches is a rotten, foolish business in many ways—though to me sitting in comfort and safety behind the lines is a great deal worse.

We passed a pleasant Christmas. I had dinner and tea with the men of the Brigade Headquarters—the former one of the most pleasant functions I have ever attended. I much prefer a ceremony of this kind along with Demos to the "Tedious pomp ... and grooms besmeared with gold" that Milton denounces so scathingly.

I am sorry the Dulwich 1st XV didn't have a very good season. To judge from the photos in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic, the forwards don't know how to pack. One of the "scrum" photographs is one of the best illustrations of how not to pack that I have ever struck. It seems to me that there has been a lack of training. But what I do remark with joy is the care that has been taken with the games. All will be well with the school if the games are keen.

I have just been reading the first book that I've found that absolutely gets the atmosphere of the Western Front—namely, "The Red Horizon," by Patrick McGill, the navvy poet. It really is great. He doesn't spare the horror of the thing one iota, but it "gets one right." "Sapper" has a good picture of the fighting man, but a very bad one of the Front. McGill has got a pretty good one of the man and a superb one of the Front. He describes to a "T" one's sensations under shell-fire.

January 11th, 1917.

Congratulate me! I am, as I have every reason to believe, on the verge of the most stupendous good fortune that has ever yet come my way. Last night I got a wire ordering me to present myself at Headquarters, Heavy M.G.C., for interview with the Colonel-in-charge. Well, I went up for my interview this morning, and was tested for vision by the Colonel with my glasses on. Finally he told me that he was going to recommend me for the Tanks, which means that the thing is as good as settled. I had not dared to hope for such luck, owing to the fact of my not having any special qualification. However, my usual marvellous good fortune seems not to have deserted me. It means just this, that I am going to be a member of the most modern and most interesting branch of the service. So great is my delight that I scarcely know whether I am standing on my head or my heels. The transfer will, I fear, prevent my coming home on leave for a time. Anyway, it's more than possible that I shall come back to England to train. I hope not, for despite my earnest desire—more than you can ever guess—to see you all again, I think it is far better to remain on active service, if possible, when on duty.

I've been pretty busy with my brigade work recently, though to nothing like the degree of November and the first fortnight of December. One meets strange types of humanity on this sort of duty. You can divide the countryfolk round these parts into three lots: (a) The farmers—on the whole honest, but decidedly avaricious; the French farmer's one fear in life is that his neighbour across the way is being paid at a higher price than he himself. (b) The average merchant, who is on the lookout for making a bit in all sorts of illegal ways, such as cheating us by underweight. (c) The honest middlemen, who, I regret to say, are few and far between. As far as possible we always try to deal with the farmers direct, as they are fairly honest, though very obstinate. An honest middleman is very useful, but there are not many of him. Business difficulties are increased by the extraordinary accent in which the country people hereabouts talk. Sometimes even French interpreters find themselves at a loss. I am getting into it famously, and can even speak with the local accent myself, to a certain extent.

Did you see that my old colleague, E. C. Cartwright, has got the M.C.? His reports of 1st XV matches in Evans's year were the feature of The Alleynian, as were poor Edkins's reports in the year of my own captaincy. Also J. P. Jordan, another O.A., well known to me, has won the M.C.

I am delighted that the Old Man (Mr. A. H. Gilkes) has received the living of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford. He could, I am sure, have never had an appointment more to his tastes—barring, indeed, his mastership at his beloved Dulwich. As a headmaster he was a gigantic character; of that there can be no doubt whatever.

January 28th, 1917.

No news yet of my application for transfer. But people "in the know" tell me that it is only a question of time. The document having been approved and recommended by all the necessary authorities is, I presume, now wandering through the multifarious ramifications of the maze of Army offices, but I am told it will soon filter down. One thing that pleases me is an assurance that the A.S.C. authorities, whatever may have happened in the past, are not this time blocking my transfer. From your knowledge of my weaknesses, you will no doubt have guessed that I'm on pins these days—the period of waiting for the result of an exam., even if you think you've passed, is always a trying one. It is especially so for me on account of my absurdly impatient temperament. I fear that leave is out of the question till the transfer is settled one way or the other.

The cold weather now prevalent must add yet a fresh discomfort to those that are being endured by our men in the trenches. I cannot recollect a cold spell of such severity continuing for so long a time. We had a heavy snowfall a fortnight back, and since then there has been incessant and exceptionally hard frost. The roads in places are wellnigh impassable owing to frozen snow. Going down one steep hill to-day in our motor-car we all but turned completely over, as at a curve in the road the car-wheels, instead of answering to the steering gear, skidded on the frozen surface, and the car swung completely round on its axis, finishing by facing the opposite way to that in which we were travelling. Where the roads are not very slippery they are as hard as iron. A curious result is that you have a thick dust raised over a snow-covered landscape and in bitterly cold weather!

I was much interested in the Balliol College pamphlet and the Master's accompanying letter. Balliol appears to have done even more than its part in the War. Did you see that the Brakenbury Scholarship in History for 1916 was taken by a chap from Gresham School, Holt? I often wonder whether I shall ever go up to Oxford. Almost needless to say, to go there would be the crowning joy of my life, but I cannot help thinking that circumstances will render it impossible. Still, we will hope for the best. One thing I mean to do after the War is to learn Russian thoroughly and to visit Russia. I am not at all sure that travelling is not the best of all Universities. The great disadvantage of a 'Varsity is the insularity of mind which it is apt to breed. Its rigid observance of ancient customs, its cult of "form," the fact that it is the almost exclusive monopoly of the rich, the aristocracy and the upper middle-class; above all, its contempt for the learning of modern times and studied disregard of modern languages—all these features help to make the 'Varsity as insular as the most insular of all English national institutions. On the other hand, by its genuine intellectuality, by its cult of the beautiful and the abstract, by its scorn of the sordid business side of modern civilisation, by its enthusiasm for athletics and by its traditions of duty and of patriotism, the 'Varsity remains, to my mind, one of the most healthful influences in modern British life.

Talking of English insularity, it is curious to note how the Englishman makes his progress abroad. He is so insular that instead of learning the language and adopting the customs of the country he is in, he makes the indigenous population adopt his! He does not, for example, know much French, but he has evolved a sort of patois—much nearer English than French—that enables the inhabitants to understand him and comprehend what he wants.

I have recently been reading another of John Buchan's, called "Greenmantle." If you haven't read it, get it. It is just as good as Buchan's other books, rich in mystery and scintillating with adventure. It deals with this War and the experiences of Richard Hannay (whom you will recollect as the hero of the "Thirty-nine Steps," and who has since become a Major and got wounded at Loos) in his efforts, eventually crowned with success, to crush a German plot—this plot being the working up of a "Jehad," or Holy War among the Mohammedans, and so provoking a rising of Islam against the British. A thoroughly live story, told with great spirit.

I have also read H. G. Wells's war novel, "Mr. Britling Sees It Through." It is undeniably clever, though not to my mind up to the level of Wells's very best. It rather gives the impression in parts of having been written by the mile and then lengths cut off as required. He has one very good touch, the realisation of the impersonal and indiscriminate nature of the War: it claims as victims both Mr. Britling's own son and the young German who had been living with them before the War. The book concludes with a letter from Britling to the German boy's father, attempting to find some way out of the blackness. As usual with Wells, the best feature of the novel is the way in which he expresses the point of view of the average man. He has the trick of recording reflections in a sort of staccato style, with gaps here and there—just the way that one does think. There is some rot in the book, but on the whole it is very good and well worth reading. Recently I have been attending a Veterinary Course—lectures and practical demonstration; most fascinating it is, I can assure you.[Back to Contents]

WITH THE TANK CORPS

On February 13, 1917, Paul Jones joined the M.G.C.H.B., in other words the Tank Corps. His joy at this transfer was unbounded. Nothing could be in sharper contrast than the letters he wrote after joining the Tank Corps and those penned during the preceding three months, when the enforced inactivity of the cavalry and the nature of his own routine work preyed on his spirits and made him exclaim with Ulysses:

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use,
As though to breathe were Life!

February 13th, 1917.

When I came in from my morning's work yesterday what should I find but a telegram instructing me to report at the earliest possible moment to Headquarters, Heavy M.G.C., for duty on transfer! These things usually come with a rush after one has been kept waiting a long time in suspense. I spent the rest of the day in bringing my accounts and papers up to date, and this morning came across in the motor to my destination. Is it not splendid? My luck has never yet failed to stand me in good stead. I won't deny, nevertheless, that it was a severe wrench parting from the old Cavalry Division after twenty months of service with it. I had formed many friendships there, among both officers and men, and it cost me many a pang to bid them good-bye. All partings from old associations are hard to bear even when the parting leads up, as in my case, to the fulfilment of one's greatest ambition. My delight knows no bounds at my new appointment. I really am asking myself whether I am awake or not. It almost seems too good to be true.

I am writing this letter in my new mess which is in a Neissen hut. For the present I remain Lieutenant A.S.C.—till the period of probation is past. But that's no matter, for the acme of my military ambitions is now attained. My new messmates are almost all ex-infantry men, many of whom, most in fact, are here learning their new job. Strangely enough, I am the third Senior Lieutenant in the company, and in point of active service, with my twenty months in France, I stand well in front of almost all of them. The O.C. of the company, stroke of good luck for me, is an old Hussar officer and ex-member of the Cavalry Brigade which I have just quitted. It was a joy to meet him again. I was able to give him a lot of news about his old pals.

All the fellows in the new mess are amazed that I have been without leave since the beginning of May, 1916. I must not set my leave before my work, however. I have already started my new labours. Altogether I am in luck all round. I verily believe I am the luckiest man in the B.E.F. to-day. Congratulate me! You will be interested to know that an old Dulwich boy, Ambrose, to whom I gave 2nd XV Colours in my year of football captaincy, is in the same battalion, but I have not met him yet.

To his Brother.

February 17th, 1917.

I am getting on splendidly. I can't tell you how bucked I am with life. It was my third shot to get out of the "great Department," and not only did I succeed in this, but I have obtained that which I had most desired. I had really hardly dared to hope that I should succeed in getting into the Tank Corps. There are a lot of Rugger men among the officers here, including an O.A., Ambrose, who was one of the best of the 2nd XV forwards in 1914. In our company is a splendid fellow called Hedderwick, who played for Loretto and was tried for Cambridge; and a man called Saillard, who was the Haileybury full-back in that match when they beat us at Haileybury by 32 to 12 in Evans's year. You may recollect Saillard getting laid out in the second half, Haileybury continuing without a full-back—with very sound judgment as it turned out, for this enabled them to play us off our legs in the scrum and control the game with eight forwards to seven, and we never got the ball to give to our eight outsides. To sum up, I am in most congenial society and enjoying life hugely.

Naturally, I am working pretty hard, learning my new job. I am determined to make good at it, and I have the conviction that, with hard work and concentration, a man with education behind him can succeed in pretty well anything that he likes. Leave may come in the near future, provided the authorities consider I have made sufficient progress in my new studies; but I have a lot to learn, and it is not my desire to go on leave before I have mastered at least the elements of my new job—very much the reverse, in fact.

February 20th, 1917.

Am having a grand time—up to my eyes in oil, grease and mud from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. I am finding my old hobby of engineering of the greatest value, and my enthusiasm for seeing "the wheels go round" has returned in all its old force. Even the gas-engine and dynamo of famous (or infamous) memory are proving most serviceable to me through the experience I acquired with them—demonstrating again how useful the most recherchÉ of ideas, occupations or hobbies may become. No knowledge is to be despised.

The only fly in the ointment is that an exam. is due for me in a week's time or so—as you know, impending exams. fill me with terror. I have such an accursedly active imagination that I find it impossible to banish from my head the thought, "What if I fail?" I've always been afflicted with this, though I am bound to say that when it came to the point it did not, as far as might be judged by results, affect my actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at bottom to egotism.

There is quite a number of South Welshmen in our lot out here, including some men from Llanelly. There are also a lot of Scotsmen among the officers, fellows of broad speech and dry humour to whom I am much drawn.

You haven't hit on a book on some musical subject for me, have you? I would much like a work dealing with Wagner or Beethoven. It is music that I miss more than anything in the intellectual line. Shall we ever hear the "Ring" again, I wonder? Anyway, it was one of the supreme experiences of my life to have heard it conducted by Nikisch. I regard the "Ring" as one of the world's artistic masterpieces. It is conceived on a scale of unparalleled grandeur, and must be thought of as an organised whole.

I miss the "Proms" and the Sunday Concerts, too—both have done a real national service in popularising the greatest music.

February 28th, 1917.

In the language of Tommy, I am "in the pink" and getting on first-rate. Am delighted to say I passed well in that examination, being marked "very good indeed." I got more than 90 per cent. of marks. I never dared to hope for such success. It would be absurd to deny that I am hugely bucked at the result, but I had had a pretty strenuous training for the exam. I am still engaged in learning, but now in a different department, though of equal interest, and I am glad to say that no examination is involved this time.

Last Sunday we had a real first-rate game of Rugger—not very scientific as far as passing and outside play were concerned, but a great struggle forward. My own side had a couple of splendid Scottish forwards against it, and I had a great deal of defence to do, falling on the ball, etc. The final was 6-3 against us, but one glaring offside try was allowed to our opponents—accidentally, of course, as the referee's view was unfortunately obstructed at the time. It was a grand game to play in, though I was not in the best of training—one's first game for fourteen months is usually apt to be a bit of a strain, and I hadn't played since I turned out for the O.A.'s at Dulwich in December, 1915. It was simply great, worth living years for, to touch a Rugger ball again.

March 17th, 1917.

These days for me are crammed full of work, 8.30 A.M. to 6 or 7 P.M. as a general rule. I am enjoying life hugely, however. To me hard work has always been preferable to slack times, and I like going at high pressure. Besides, this is such a grand job that the work is a sheer pleasure. By Jove! if you only knew how much happier I am these days than in any period during the twenty odd months I had spent previously playing at soldiers in the "Grub Department." It amazes me that I could have been so long contented with work like that of the A.S.C. Well, anyway, those days are over and done with, and a new and brighter era has been ushered in. As a rule, I am now almost always in an incredible state of grease and oil and grime, which, remembering my old propensities, you will know delights me. The old gas-engine at home was nothing to it. I have had to set aside a special suit for daily use, as even with overalls on there is not sufficient protection against grease, oil, petrol and mud. I cannot tell you how supremely happy I am in my work.

Ambrose returned to his company from a course of instruction last week, and he came across immediately to see me. We discussed old times and old friends with great gusto. There are two other Dulwich men in the battalion whom I never knew well, as they were fairly senior fellows when I was only a kid, though I distinctly remember both. Their names are Trimingham and Sewell. They were in what was in those days Treadgold's House.

I am sending back by the same post a pair of spectacles which got broken recently. Will you please get them repaired? I still have four sound pairs, but I always like to keep up the set of five with which I started in the War.

The breaking of the great frost created appalling conditions on this countryside, which for some time was an absolute quagmire. Even now things are pretty bad, though the weather improves daily.

March 20th, 1917.

Well, the Boche has retreated on the Somme, as most people anticipated he would, though few imagined he would make such a considerable withdrawal. He is a cute customer, of that there is no doubt. He never does a thing without having a reason. Yet there have been occasions in the War when he has entirely misjudged the situation. Take Ypres and Verdun for example. This retirement on the Somme is clever, though it may tell on the morale of his men. On the other hand, the Boche relies, and always has relied, much more on discipline than on morale for keeping his army together. He has never developed esprit de corps as it has been developed in our army, or the French, but there's no denying that his discipline is something pretty considerable. That discipline, as far as can be gauged, has as its foundation a very efficient system of N.C.O.'s. His officers are intelligent, but nothing to write home about, but his N.C.O.'s are unquestionably very good. I have myself witnessed their influence among gangs of prisoners we have taken.

It must necessarily come about in the course of a War that situations arise when esprit de corps is equivalent to, and even produces, discipline. That is where brother Boche fails to rise to the occasion. I am not of those who think the Boche a coward, but undoubtedly an unexpected situation very often plays the very deuce with both his courage and his organisation. In his plans he allows for most possibilities, but he is nonplussed when the situation does not turn out exactly as it should on paper. Again, man for man, he loses "guts" in tight corners, because of this same lack of initiative. It is perhaps a temperamental failing. There have been moments in this War when only his incapacity to deal with a suddenly-developed situation has stood between him and stupendous success. He has assumed, let us say, that by all the rules of War the enemy must have reserves available, and has therefore ceased his attack until such time as he could muster his forces to meet the counter-attack by these imagined reserve troops, when actually his enemy had no reserves at all. Conversely, he has assumed on many occasions that his enemy must, by all the rules of War, be battered into pulp or asphyxiated, and that he has only to advance over the bodies of his foes to win an overwhelming victory; yet somehow or other from out of the indescribable dÉbris and havoc wrought by his artillery or gas, arise survivors who, though half-dead, yet have enough life and pluck to hold him back.

Take as illustrations either the second battle of Ypres or Verdun. In the first case, after the first surprise gas attack a rent about a mile and a half wide had been torn in the Allied line. Against a vast number of German troops there was opposed only one single division of what Bernhardi contemptuously termed "Colonial Militia," namely, the Canadians. For quite a long time there were no other troops of ours (save a few oddments) in the vicinity. The Boche had five miles or so to get to "Wipers." Of these he covered just about two, and even that ground was only what he gained in the first surprise of his gas attack. Between him and the Channel coast there still stretched a khaki line. The same sort of situation was repeated several times during the second battle of Ypres (though the odds were never so great as in these first April days), yet the result was always the same.

Take Verdun again. For me this prolonged battle has a strange fascination. There is something more terrible and primitive about it than about any other struggle of the War. It was a sort of death-grip between two antagonistic military conceptions.

(The remainder of this letter never came to hand.)

March 31st, 1917.

It must be a singular experience for our troops on the Somme to miss enemy artillery fire, trench mortars, grenades, etc., from the scheme of things. What a huge relief to the Infantry to have a pause from the eternal "Whew-w-w-w-Crash" of the high explosives! I fear, nevertheless, that the British infantrymen will soon resume acquaintance with them, for the War isn't over by a long chalk yet. Meanwhile, however, the sight of an at present comparatively unblemished countryside must be a great joy to men sick of the howling wilderness created on the ground that has been contended for since July, 1916. I know those Somme battlefields—every square yard of soil honeycombed with shell-holes, all traces of verdure vanished, trees reduced to withered skeletons, blasted forests, fragments of houses, with the poor human dead rotting all around. Verily a nightmare country.

You may have remarked in the last Alleynian a poem called the "Infantryman," by Captain E. F. Clarke. It appeared first in Punch some time ago and has had a great vogue. When I read it first, before I knew who the author was, I was greatly taken with this poem. I now see from The Alleynian that it is the work of an O.A., a chap whom I held in high regard, namely, Eric Clarke, whom you cannot fail to remember as King Richard II in the Founder's Day Play, 1913—his superb acting in that rÔle was greatly admired. It was he who was to a large extent responsible for my undertaking the editorship of The Alleynian. He was my immediate predecessor in the job.

The poem appeals powerfully to me. To use the words of a Canadian poet, R. W. Service, "it hits me right." It has a swing about it, it has ideas, it has atmosphere. Pervading it through and through is the atmosphere of this Western Front. I have often told you that I had yet to meet the man who could convey that atmosphere in story, book or article. Clarke's poem (along with Bairnsfather's pictures) is one of the very first pieces I have read that really gets this atmosphere. The verse is not particularly polished, but it has life and force. Its simplicity adds to its effectiveness. Such an expression as "the sodden khaki's stench" lives in the memory, for it appeals directly to the soldier's recollection of his experiences—that odour the infantryman must have noticed dozens of times in the wet dawn, when he was waiting to go "over the top." Clarke has undoubtedly made a name for himself by the poem. Decidedly he has lived up to the high reputation he had at school. It looks as if he will make a name in literature. [See p. 240, text and footnote].

These days I am tremendously busy and revelling in it, as the work is so completely congenial. I am muddier and greasier than at any other period of my existence, and gloriously happy withal.

A corporal in our Company lives in the Herne Hill district, and in civil life was a tram conductor for the L.C.C. on the Norwood section. He has been out here two years, and won the Military Medal for gallantry on the Somme. Very interesting to meet one of the "dim millions" from one's own neighbourhood in this fashion, n'est ce pas?

In April Paul Jones, as a Tank Officer, took part in the battle of Arras.

April 24th, 1917.

I am splendidly well and enjoying life hugely. If my letters for the past three weeks have been few and far between, you must put it down to War activities. It would be ridiculous to try to conceal the fact that my movements of late have, to a certain extent, been connected with the great "stunt" now in progress. For me the past three weeks or so have been a period full of incident and rich in variety—quite and by far the best period of my life up to date. There have been certain rotten incidents that have worried me at times; but, on the whole, I have been far happier during that period than at any other time since joining the Army. Thank goodness! I shall at length be able to hold up my head among other Dulwich men and not be forced to admit with shame that in this War I only played a safe, comfortable, luxurious part in the A.S.C. No! those wretched days are over and done with. Even now, I have a far easier time than thousands of fellows in the Infantry.

I have referred to certain rotten incidents. The worst of these was the death in action of one of my best friends in the Company. This chap was a young Scotsman named Tarbet. We had been thrown very much together and became warm friends. On April 9 Tarbet was killed by a sniper about 11 A.M. while out in the open reconnoitring the approach to the Boche second line. I came along to relieve him an hour later, and practically fell over his dead body—a very bad moment, I assure you. Another of our section officers was wounded in the face about the same time by shrapnel. I myself had rather a close shave, as I was alongside another man at the time he was hit in the head by a shrapnel bullet. I scarcely realised the explosion until I saw the poor fellow wounded.

On the whole, that day was an absolute picnic. The only trouble was that the Boche ran back too fast in our particular sector for us to inflict all the damage on him that we would have liked to have done. Such, however, has not been the case everywhere since. He is fighting desperately hard now.

Two more O.A.'s killed in action—Gerald Gill[16] and Eric Clarke.[17] Gill took his colours in cricket, gym, and football. His impersonation of M. Perrichon in the French play on Founder's Day, 1913, was very clever and entertaining. I am also much grieved at Clarke's death. He was shaping for a brilliant career. It's just awful this sacrifice of the best of our young men.

To his Brother.

April 29th, 1917.

Circumstances are making my letter-writing increasingly difficult. It is rather a case of "but that I am forbid I could a tale unfold," etc. I suppose holidays are on just now. I want to tell you that I am confidently looking forward to your winning a great success in the forthcoming Matriculation. By Jove! it doesn't seem such a long time since I was in for that exam. myself. In my day we were able to take it at the school, now I believe you have to go up to London University. Eheu fugaces!

The more I see of life the more convinced I am of the greatness of the old school. Wherever you meet a Dulwich man out here, you'll find he bears a reputation for gallantry, for character, for hard work and for what may be termed "the public-school spirit" in its best form. Our Roll of Honour and the literally amazing list of decorations bear this out. Of my own old colleagues, there is not one who has not either been hit (alas! killed in many cases) or received some decoration, or both; and that, mark you, though we are not what is known as an "Army School" like Eton, Cheltenham, or Wellington. Ambrose, the O.A. in our battalion, has recently accomplished some wonderful things, and is sure to receive a high decoration. Yet one more up for the school!

Did you see that Scottie is now an Acting-Lieutenant-Colonel, with a D.S.O. and the M.C.? That is some achievement, if you like! C. N. Lowe, the famous footballer, has been wounded. He had transferred to the Flying Corps out of the A.S.C. Doherty, who used also to be in the "Grub Department," has now got a Company in the Infantry. You see, it isn't in the nature of a Dulwich man to be leading a life of ease when other men are fighting.

I have been having a great time of late. Work of surpassing interest, a certain amount of excitement, and a knowledge that one was more or less directly participating in the winning of the War—what more can the heart of man desire? If only poor old Tarbet hadn't been killed—he was a dear pal of mine,—there wouldn't be a cloud on the horizon. Don't let the Mater and Pater get the wind up about my personal safety. At present I am quite safe; besides, I have wonderful luck. I was only saved by a miracle from being blown into the air last September on the Somme. I may get home on leave in the near future.

May 4th, 1917.

I rejoice to say that Ambrose has received the D.S.O. for that achievement referred to in my last letter. He more than deserves it. He had a most terrible experience. The D.S.O. for a subaltern is one of the very highest honours that the Army has to bestow. We are all very bucked about it, especially the O.A. section of the battalion.

How anomalous the War has become—the world's great Land Power striving to strike its decisive blow at sea, while the great Sea Power is endeavouring to strike its decisive blow on land! This double paradox will give much food for reflection to future historians. I am coming to the conclusion that without a complete knowledge of the facts it is well-nigh impossible to derive accurate deductions from History. It seems to me you can make History prove anything. To understand History in all its significance, one must be familiar also with literature, languages and science.

Talking of science, do you see that some modern scientists are throwing doubt on the original theory of Evolution? They admit the possibility of the modification of species through natural selection, but they dispute the theory that any broad change takes place in the genera of organisms. They do not even admit the possibility of the atrophy, through long disuse, of organs of which the animal no longer has need. They are forced to admit that many species and genera have become extinct—so much is proved by the skeletons of prehistoric beasts found from time to time under the earth's surface. But what they dispute is that there is any connection between those beasts and living animals. They say, for instance, that as far back as we have records, we find the horse practically the same, organically speaking, as he is to-day. They cast doubt, that is, on the theory that the horse is descended from the pterodactyl.

It is an interesting point, though there appears to be no essential difference between this new school and the thoroughgoing evolutionists; for both admit the principle of the survival of the fittest. To me the new school's conception seems to be grotesque. According to them, the world was originally full of an enormous number of animals, organisms and what not, of which some have up to date survived, and whose numbers will decrease until only a few certain types, or perhaps one certain type, will be left subsisting. That is a view that I cannot accept. But, of course, Nature has many checks on the propagation and the multiplication of species. Natural conditions do not permit of the existence of too many species or sub-species. But it is clear that there are types, call them genera, species, or what you will, that have, by virtue of some inherent fitness and flexibility of adaptation, survived and mastered other types.

The theory or principle of Natural Selection can also be applied to nations. As far back as we have any record, man was much the same sort of being as he is to-day. The genus, in fact, has not changed. It is now established that in the long distant past there was one great Aryan race in Central Asia, which has split up since then into the peoples and nations of modern Europe, India, Arabia, and so forth. Biologically speaking, these peoples have all some traits in common, but environment has wrought great changes and has created species. Between these species there are great differences, so great indeed that various of them are to-day engaged in a good old intertribal war.

But has the genus Man always borne the same sort of characteristics as those that distinguish him to-day? Or, on the other hand, is he descended from a kangaroo-rat through the long lineage of the pithecanthropus, the ape-man, the man-ape, and so forth? And why stop at the kangaroo-rat—the first mammal to bring forth its young alive? Why not continue his lineage right back to the original bi-cellular organism—protoplasm? If these are our humble beginnings, what a progression to Man, so "noble in reason, infinite in faculty"!

Speculations about the development of life are very fascinating. I hold very strongly to belief in the survival of the fittest. Accepting this theory, you can explain most of the apparent inconsistencies that exist in the world. But I must admit that there is at least a possibility that genera are not changed by environment, time or circumstances. Perhaps they exist until they become unfit, when they vanish. The genus may remain in existence as a permanency till it ceases to become fit to survive, but the species most certainly alters. The only point in dispute is, therefore: do genera become altered by environment, etc.? Or do they exist unaltered till they become unfit, when they just vanish from this sublunary scene? However this may be, the broad principle of natural selection seems to me to be unshakably established.

May 20th, 1917.

I was absolutely taken aback by the news of Felix Cohn's[18] death. It seems almost incredible to me, even at this moment. It was only a few days ago that we met out here. He had then been "over the top" and was in high spirits. He was a sincere fellow and played his part like a man. I do take off my hat to the Infantry. No one in England realises what we all owe to them; marvellous men they are. How they endure what they do, Heaven only knows. If you see Mr. Cohn, please express to him my deepest sympathy, or rather, send me his address and I will write to him.

We of the Tank Corps are having a pleasant and peaceful time in billets these days. Nature hereabouts is beginning to put on her best dress. It is some contrast between the vivid green foliage that one sees about here and the blasted trees and shell-shattered areas of the fighting zone. Only one thing indicating the living force of nature did I remark in that dreary countryside. This was the piping of a few birds now and again in the most unlikely places. Bar that, the battle zone is a blasted area, where the only difference between the seasons is noted by a change of temperature and the transformation of mud into dust. Meanwhile, I am having a very good time in billets; but I am looking forward eagerly to a real scrap with the Boche.

Thanks so much for the "Perfect Wagnerite." It is a treat to read about the "Ring" once more. I would give much to be able to hear it again.

To his Brother.

May 25th, 1917.

Just a line to wish you the best of luck in the Matric, and to express the hope that you will do really well. Put in all the work you can right up to within twenty-four hours of the start of the exam. and then take one day right off duty altogether. I am certain you will do us all infinite credit.

As to the Pater's remark that my recent letters have lacked detail, this is mainly due to the Censorship regulations, which I personally like to observe in the spirit as well as in the letter. Besides, a careless remark may be misconstrued, and it is difficult to say one thing without disclosing others that ought not to be revealed. Then there is the other consideration, that if I write fully you may perhaps get the "wind up" about my personal safety.

As regards photographs of myself, the regulations as to the possession of cameras are very stringent, and I really haven't the time or the inclination to go and get snapped by a civilian photographer out here. Again, entre nous, I regard photographs as trivialities—above all, those abominations "photos from the Front." A man who is really at the Front has neither time nor occasion to have photographs taken. No, if we must worry, let us worry first about the things that do matter. I am frightfully sorry about the death of Felix Cohn. He was very cheerful when I saw him. We met twice in a certain large town which has of late figured prominently in the communiquÉs. Our talk was of Dulwich, the cases of Roederwald and Gropius, of Wagner and music; and, of course, of the War itself. He had then been "over the top" once, on the same day that I was. Felix said that he had had an easy time, as his lot took about seven lines of trenches in an hour. He had done considerable work as a translator of German documents and in the examination of captured Germans. I feel sincere sympathy for Mr. Cohn, but there is little use in words of condolence in the case of such tragedies. It is the price of the game.

To a large extent, the Pater's deductions about the work in Tanks on hot days are correct. Still, you can wear practically what you like when on duty, so one works in a shirt, shorts, puttees and boots. Although we are for the time being out of the battle line, I am really very busy; there is no slacking in the H.B.M.G.C.; but I am enjoying life hugely.

I manage to get a good deal of bathing these days, as there is a beautiful little river about a stone's throw away from our billets. By the way, I hope you are continuing as keen as ever on your swimming. As to leave, it has again vanished into the limbo of futurity. I am not particularly sorry. Leave is such a fleeting joy. Just as one is beginning to get into the way of things at home one has to go back again to the Front. I would much prefer to get the War completely over than get leave. After all, in my present job I am not worried by monotony, and I find the work of absorbing interest. Moreover, I have many friends in this battalion, and, above all, in our own Company, which contains some really splendid fellows. What I miss most is music.

June 10th, 1917.

There are few opportunities of writing, and the busy period is likely to last for a space, so I fear my correspondence for some time to come will be but scanty. Our northern push has been a first-rate success. The simultaneous explosion of those mines on the Messines Ridge must have created a terrific din, though I myself never heard a sound, being at the time wrapped in the sleep of the just.

I do hope things are going well in the old school, but I fear that in existing conditions it is a difficult period for all public schools. Owing to the War, boys leave so much younger now, and you do not have fellows of eighteen and nineteen to set the tone; and at that age they have unquestionably a far greater sense of responsibility than at sixteen or seventeen, or, I imagine, in the first years at the 'Varsity after leaving school. Ian Hay says somewhere that a senior boy at a public school is a far more serious and responsible being than an undergraduate. As there are no senior boys, it is more than ever incumbent upon the masters to keep up the esprit de corps of the school, and to help maintain the old standards in work and games.

Talking of masters, I much liked that poem entitled the "House-Master" in a recent number of Punch. It is just the case of Kittermaster, Nightingale, or Scottie, isn't it? I pray and trust that Dulwich in these difficult days will maintain its fine traditions. The welfare of the school is a very precious thing to me. I am inclined to think that my own six and a half years (1908-15) at Dulwich were about the time of its Augustan era. Among other things, this period included the year of the two Balliol scholars, the year of the crack "footer" team that never lost a match, and it was marked by a consistent average of first-class XV's throughout. It produced five "blues" and internationals, and would have produced many other "blues," and perhaps internationals, had it not been for the War—Evans, for example, as half-back, and Franklin or either of the Gilligans as three-quarters. It was also the period of A. E. R. Gilligan, unquestionably the finest all-round public-school athlete of the past decade; the period of the gymnastic records; of the sports records; with a consistent average of scholarships and other educational distinctions, such as Reynolds's B.A., direct from the school. Finally, this period was marked by a general spirit of keenness and industry, both in work and games, throughout the school. It was truly a glorious time. Oh, to have it all over again!

June 18th, 1917.

For over three weeks we have been working at exceptionally high pressure. Chief interest now centres in Flanders. Our branch did wonderfully well there, though the Boche apparently didn't offer serious resistance anywhere. I was inexpressibly shocked to hear of the death of that chivalrous Irishman, Willie Redmond. The fact that he was carried off the battlefield in an Ulster ambulance was a most touching episode, and should go far to reconcile the mutually antagonistic Irish parties. Such an incident is one of the compensations of War—few enough though they may be, Heaven knows! As it drags on, the War is becoming more and more mechanical. It is now like one enormous engine, with multitudinous cogwheels, each of which plays its part.

July 4th, 1917.

Looking at the Casualty Lists recording the death of so many brave men, and thinking of the grief in the homes, one feels that this War lies heavy on the world like a black horror. And yet I find myself ever more irresistibly (albeit wholly against my will and wishes) forced to the conclusion that War is a part of the order of things. Did you read the Russian Socialists' manifesto on the War? While, on the one hand, they ascribed responsibility for it to the capitalist classes in the warring countries, yet they admitted that Russia's withdrawal from the War would put the Boche section of capitalists in an advantageous position, and so decided to continue it. In other words, they admit that Democracy is powerless to avert War.

To my thinking, all History is made up of a series of movements like the swinging of a pendulum, from democracy (often via oligarchy) to imperialism, and from imperialism back to democracy. It seems to me that there is only one effective method of ensuring world-peace. It was the method of the Romans, by which one nation having fought its way to a position of undisputed and indisputable supremacy, imposed its will on the other nations of the world, and established the "Pax Romana." Similar efforts made by great men have proved a disastrous failure in the long run, though after meeting with temporary success. Rome's universal dominion did not endure long, and Napoleon's domination of the Continent was very brief. England seems to have almost succeeded up to date in her attempt to establish a "Pax Romana," for she gave order and peace to a large part of the world. England builded better than she knew, for many of the wise things she did were done under protest and from her devotion to the laissez-faire system. But this stupendous conflict shows that the "Pax Britannica" has not succeeded in averting wars.

I have heard it maintained that Karl Marx's theory is the solution of the question, namely, to ignore national boundaries and establish what he called "class-consciousness" among the wage-earners of the world. That is to say, Marx proposed to replace national consciousness—viz., the family, race or tribal consciousness that exists under the name of patriotism—by class-consciousness—viz., the consciousness of the workers in all countries that their interests are identical, the idea being that with the realisation of the unity of the workers wars would cease. To this theory there are, it seems to me, two fatal objections: (1) Even if this class-consciousness, or international solidarity of the workers, could be brought about, yet you would soon have the old division into capital and labour growing up again, through the ordinary laws of natural selection and because of the unequal capacity of different men to make their way in the world. (2) To my mind, the tribal instinct is much too strong to give way to a class-consciousness that ignores national boundaries and national rivalries.

Broadly speaking, the division of the world into nations is a natural division; and recent research all goes to confirm the theory that man never has "made good" as an individual. He begins his existence as a member of a family and of an association of families—thrown together (a) by kinship of blood or likeness of type; (b) by environment; (c) by chance or circumstance (as a rule for the purpose of self-protection). It is these enlarged families that are what we call to-day nations. I cannot see that it would be possible to replace the great and, on the whole, ennobling sentiment of patriotism by a broad international trades-unionism, which is practically what Marx proposes. And given the world as it is and animal and human nature what they are, I don't see how to prevent the interests of nations clashing. Ethically speaking, the trouble is that existence is a selfish thing. Stamp out competition—which, when you think of it, is not very far removed from war on a small scale—and experience shows that you stamp out the incentive to work and to progress. It is a melancholy conclusion to come to, but it's better to look facts in the face than to shirk them.

I had the experience the other day of visiting a portion of the country where the old battle front used to be, for two and a half years, before the Boches withdrew to their Hindenburg line. This section of ground is miles from the present front line, in fact you can only hear the guns rumbling in the distance. This whole countryside is a ruined waste—villages destroyed, weeds overgrowing everything; and no inhabitants except troops. It was strange to walk over the old trench systems and the broad green band between them (still thickly strewn with barbed wire) that used to be No Man's Land. One thought of the Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans who sat for so long in those trenches, peering at each other furtively from time to time, each doing all he could to kill the enemy, and from time to time raiding one another's lines. I examined the deep, well-ordered Boche trenches. All dug-outs and practically everything of military value they had destroyed prior to their departure, but a few concrete and steel emplacements and snipers' posts still remained—beautifully made and all in commanding positions. The destruction of the villages, farms and lands by the Germans on their retirement was absolutely systematic—not a house or a structure of any kind left standing. This area depressed one much more than the ordinary zone near the lines, because it was all so deathly empty and so weirdly silent, like the ghost of some prehistoric world. Up in the battle line you have at any rate life and activity—but here nothing at all, simply destruction and a silent desert. I noticed in this area a French Military Cemetery with names dating back to 1914! I am keeping splendidly well and am absolutely happy. By far the happiest time of my life since leaving school has been the past six months. My brother officers are a grand lot of fellows. Our own section of the Company is commanded by a young captain with the M.C., who has spent most of his life in the Colonies—a first-rate man he is. There are four other officers besides myself, all of them splendid comrades, especially one who was along with me in the old days back in April and whom I am proud to consider a bosom pal—a little Irishman, called O'Connor. He and I and poor old Jock Tarbet had always been the greatest of friends since my arrival in the Company. Alas! there are now only two of us left.

To his Brother.

July 27th, 1917.

I was charmed to get a letter from you to-day and to hear that things are progressing so well. It certainly was bad luck for you in the diving competition. However, better luck next time! I was delighted to get the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News with the photographs of the Dulwich College O.T.C. How it does warm my heart to see even a photograph of the old College and its surroundings! I note that, barring Scottie and poor Kitter, there isn't much change in the officers of the Corps. What excellent fellows they are! Give my love to them all.

Many thanks for the last parcel containing among many acceptable things a Gaboriau detective novel. I was very anxious to read this and compare it with good old Sherlock Holmes, whom I still worship as much as ever.

I have just completed two full continuous years of service in this country. Well, cheer-oh, old boy! Best luck and much love to you all! P.S.—Have you ever reflected on the fact that, despite the horrors of the war, it is at least a big thing? I mean to say that in it one is brought face to face with realities. The follies, selfishness, luxury and general pettiness of the vile commercial sort of existence led by nine-tenths of the people of the world in peace-time are replaced in war by a savagery that is at least more honest and outspoken. Look at it this way: in peace-time one just lives one's own little life, engaged in trivialities, worrying about one's own comfort, about money matters, and all that sort of thing—just living for one's own self. What a sordid life it is! In war, on the other hand, even if you do get killed you only anticipate the inevitable by a few years in any case, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you have "pegged out" in the attempt to help your country. You have, in fact, realised an ideal, which, as far as I can see, you very rarely do in ordinary life. The reason is that ordinary life runs on a commercial and selfish basis; if you want to "get on," as the saying is, you can't keep your hands clean.

Personally, I often rejoice that the War has come my way. It has made me realise what a petty thing life is. I think that the War has given to everyone a chance to "get out of himself," as I might say. Of course, the other side of the picture is bound to occur to the imagination. But there! I have never been one to take the more melancholy point of view when there's a silver lining in the cloud.

Certainly, speaking for myself, I can say that I have never in all my life experienced such a wild exhilaration as on the commencement of a big stunt, like the last April one for example. The excitement for the last half-hour or so before it is like nothing on earth. The only thing that compares with it are the few minutes before the start of a big school match. Well, cheer-oh!

This was our son's last letter. A few days later came a field postcard from him, bearing date July 30, the day before the battle in which he was killed. After that, silence—a silence that will remain unbroken this side of the grave.[Back to Contents]

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