Leave came round for officers about every six or eight months in ordinary times; heavy casualties shortened the period, general offensives cut off leave altogether. There was only one officer in France who was ever said to have refused to go on leave when his turn came round—Cross of the Fifty-second Light Infantry (the Second Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, which insisted on its original style as jealously as we kept our ‘c’ in ‘Welch’). Cross is alleged to have refused leave on these grounds: ‘My father fought with the regiment in the South African War and had no leave; my grandfather fought in the Crimea with the regiment and had no leave. I do not regard it in the regimental tradition to take home-leave when on active service.’ Cross was a professional survivor and was commanding the battalion in 1917 when I last heard of him. London seemed unreally itself. In spite of the number of men in uniform in the streets, the general indifference to and ignorance about the war was remarkable. Enlistment was still voluntary. The universal catchword was ‘Business as usual.’ My family were living in London now, at the house formerly occupied by my uncle, Robert von Ranke, the German consul. He had been forced to leave in a hurry on August 4th, 1914, and my mother had undertaken to look after it for him while the war lasted. So when Edward Marsh, then secretary to the Prime Minister, rang me up from Downing Street to arrange a meal, someone intervened and cut him off. The telephone of the German consul’s sister was, of course, closely watched by the anti-espionage men of Scotland Yard. The Zeppelin scare had just begun. Some friends of the family came in one night. They knew I had been in the trenches, but were not interested. They began telling me of the air-raids, of bombs dropped only three streets off. So I said: ‘Well, do you know, the other day I was asleep in a house and in the early morning an aeroplane dropped a bomb next door and killed three soldiers who were billeted there, and a woman and child.’ ‘Good gracious,’ they said, looking at me with sudden interest, ‘what did you do then?’ I said: ‘I went to sleep again; I was tired out. It was at a place called Beuvry, about four miles behind the trenches.’ They said: ‘Oh, but that was in France,’ and the look of interest faded from their faces, as though I had taken them in with a stupid catch. I went up to Harlech for the rest of my leave, and walked about on the hills in an old shirt and a pair of shorts. When I got back, ‘The Actor,’ a regular officer in A Company, asked me: ‘Had a good time on leave?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Go to many dances?’ I said: ‘Not one.’ ‘What shows did you go to?’ ‘I didn’t go to any shows.’ ‘Hunt?’ ‘No!’ ‘Slept with any nice girls?’ ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry to disappoint you.’ ‘What the hell _did_ you do, then?’ ‘Oh, I just walked about on some hills.’ ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘chaps like you don’t deserve to go on leave.’