First of all a week or two getting to know the ropes in _this_ corps, and then off with the Major and the General to another corps. My aunt! what an egoistical letter this is. However, to you no apologies. _December 22._ [Sidenote: A DECISION] Letters have been lurching in, in threes and fours. But what matters it how they come? I always know that they are coming. And the future's where _my_ heart is always. So here's to the letters to come, and here's to our meeting again, and here's to Life--long, sweet, glorious Life. We shall see the Christmas roses of the Cotswolds together one day, and I think the war will have given them a mysterious loveliness that we never understood before. Every year they'll come up out of the ground again and surprise us. I shall be getting older and older--and so will you, too. And all our little plans will have a quiet, peaceful joy for us that wouldn't have been possible but for the war. Art will be like angels coming and going. Effort will be intensified. The lives of the poor must be happier, because everyone will be more ready to give and take. It won't come all at once. But there'll be a difference. The war will have made a difference. Thank God for the war! _December 25._ [Sidenote: CHRISTMAS 1916] Never talk about the "idle" staff. Yesterday we were working absolutely solid without any break at all except an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner (tea? away frivolous thought!) from 9 a.m. till 11.30 p.m. Most interesting; but let's hope this first day's experience won't be a fair sample, or I shall simply melt down like a guttered candle. None of the Generals and people seemed to think it unusual. At least they never said so. Personally I found it quite kolossal. _12.30 a.m._ Such a funny Christmas Day! I've been fixing on a large map all the gun positions on the corps front. There are a very great many, and the positions must be marked very exactly. I was quite nervous lest there should be a mistake. It has taken since about two o'clock till now. And I think it is accurate at last. At about 10 p.m. I found out an awful mistake. One of the heavies quite 100 yards wrong, which might have meant that it would be ranging on the wrong place, and probably do no damage whatever. Desperate thought! Well, the staff is the most hard-working body of men I've ever seen. They don't appear ever to get any exercise. And, really, the work is all so vital that I don't see how they ever can expect to get any exercise. About leave. Possibly on the way up to the other corps a side-slip to Blighty will be allowed. Don't depend on anything. There seems to be a dearth of people who can do this work, and so it would be unwise to count on getting away. The thing is, however, conceivable--that is all. _December 27._ First of all about current affairs here.