The next news I heard was from Siegfried, who wrote from the Exchange Hotel, Liverpool, that no doubt I was worrying about him. He had come up to Liverpool a day or two before and walked into the Third Battalion orderly room at Litherland feeling like nothing on earth, but probably looking fairly self-possessed. The senior-major was commanding, the colonel being away on holiday. (I was much relieved at this bit of luck.) The senior-major, who was nicer than anything I could imagine and made him feel an utter brute, had consulted the general commanding Mersey defences. And the general was consulting God ‘or someone like that.’ Meanwhile, he was staying at the hotel, having sworn not to run away to the Caucasus. He hoped, in time, to persuade them to be nasty about it, and said that he did not think that they realized that his performance would soon be given great publicity. He hated the whole business more than ever, and knew more than ever that he was right and would never repent of what he had done. He said that things were looking better in Germany, but that Lloyd George would probably say that it was a ‘plot.’ The politicians seemed to him incapable of behaving like human beings. The general consulted not God but the War Office, and the War Office was persuaded not to press the matter as a disciplinary case, but to give Siegfried a medical board. Morgan had done his part of the work well. The next task I set myself was to persuade Siegfried to take the medical board. I rejoined the battalion and met him at Liverpool. He looked very ill; he told me that he had just been down to the Formby links and thrown his Military Cross into the sea. We discussed the whole political situation; I told him that he was right enough in theory; but that every one was mad except ourselves and one or two others, and that it was hopeless to offer rightness of theory to the insane. I said that the only possible course for us to take was to keep on going out to France till we got killed. I now expected myself before long to go back for the fourth time. I reminded him of the regiment; what did he think that the First and Second Battalions would think of him? How could they be expected to understand his point of view? They would say that he was ratting, that he had cold feet, and was letting the regiment down by not acting like a gentleman. How would Old Joe, even, understand it (and he was the most understanding man in the regiment)? To whom was his letter addressed? The army could, I repeated, only understand it as cowardice, or at the best as a lapse from good form. The civilians were more mad and hopeless than the army. He would not accept this view, but I made it plain that his letter had not been given and would not be given the publicity he intended; so, because he was ill, and knew it, he consented to appear before the medical board.