The parcels from W----'s arrived all safe and sound, thanks to your careful arrangements, and we are, in consequence, living in the lap of luxury. The tinned fruit is specially appreciated, and very good for us, I've no doubt. By the way, you will be glad to know that the boiler-maker's suit in one piece of water-proofed canvas is a huge success. I wore it on that last bombing raid. For patrol work, or wiring, for anything over the parapet, and in the trench, too, at night-time, for instance, I don't think there's anything to beat it. There's nothing to catch or get in one's way, and it's a great joy to keep one's ordinary clothes clean and decent. On patrol it's better than oilskin, because it's silent--doesn't rustle. I dare say you've heard that phrase--I forget whose it is--about the backbone of the Army being the non-commissioned man. I suspect it was all right when it was written, and goodness knows, there's not much the matter with the non-commissioned man to-day. Only, there isn't the difference that there was between the N.C.O. and the "other ranks"--the men. The N.C.O. isn't the separate type he was, because the N.C.O. of to-day is so often the man of yesterday; promotion having necessarily been rapid in the New Army. We had to make our own N.C.O.'s from the start. They're all backbone, now, men and N.C.O.'s alike. And the officers are quite all right, thank you, too. I doubt whether officers in any Army have ever worked harder than the officers of our New Army--the "Temporary Gentlemen," you know--are working to-day. They have had to work hard. Couldn't leave it to N.C.O.'s, you see, because, apart from anything else, they've had to make the N.C.O.'s out of privates; teach 'em their job. So we're all backbone together. And when you hear some fellow saying "The men are splendid," you need not think he's just paying a conventional tribute or echoing a stereotyped kind of praise. It's true; "true as death," as Harry Lauder used to sing; it's as true as anything I know. It's Gospel truth. The men are absolutely and all the time splendid. I'm not an emotional sort of a chap, and I'm sure before the war I never gave a thought to such things; but, really, there is something incurably and ineradicably fine about the rough average Englishman, who has no surface graces at all. You know the kind I mean. The decency of him is something in his grain. It stands any test you like to apply. It's the same colour all the way through. I'm not emotional; but I don't mind telling you, strictly between ourselves, that since I've been out here in trenches I've had the water forced into my eyes, not once, but a dozen times, from sheer admiration and respect, by the action of rough, rude chaps whom you'd never waste a second glance on in the streets of London; men who, so far from being exceptional, are typical through and through; just the common, low-down street average.