On the whole, from a literary point of view, the hydros come out better than the mere hotels. But of course they have unequalled advantages. With such material as Dowsing Radiant Heat, D’Arsonval High Frequency and Fango Mud Treatment almost any writer could be sensational. What is High Frequency, I wonder? It is clear, at any rate, that it would be madness to have a hydro without it. Well, I have selected my hotel--on purely literary grounds. Or rather I have selected two. One is the place where they have the Famous Whirlpool Baths. I shall go there at once. The manager of the other is a great artist; alone among the collaborators he understands simplicity. His contribution occupies a whole page; but there is practically nothing in it; nothing about cuisine or sanitation, or elegance, or comfort. Only, in the middle, he writes, quite simply: THE MOST PERFECT HOTEL IN THE WORLD. Five Inches THE GREAT JOKE They came and split a turkey with us on Boxing Day, ten old soldiers, all out of a job, and only ten legs between them. At least there were only ten real legs; two of them had admirable imitation ones, and there were sixteen excellent crutches. One of them was a miner--_was_, of course; just now he is not mining much; perhaps that is why he seemed such a decent fellow, not at all violent or unpleasant, as one knows those practising miners are. In fact he reminded one of the miners one used to have in one’s platoon. Personally I had the honour to have a whole platoon of them. Odd, isn’t it, what capital fellows they were then, and how sadly they deteriorate when they get back to the mines? And it was odd, too, to hear this fellow say that he wished he could be back in the pits; I thought it was such a hateful and dangerous occupation. Yes, he was a nice miner, and so were the rest of them, very cheerful and respectful. But they didn’t talk much--at first. It was strangely difficult to find a safe subject. A few years ago there would have been no difficulty; one would have talked war-shop. “Were you ever at Ypres?” “I was on Gallipoli.” “Did you know Captain ----?” and so on. We did a little of this, but it didn’t go very well. In the dining-room I keep a large coloured photograph of the top of the Vimy Ridge on the day of a battle--you know the sort of thing, a hideous expanse of broken brown earth, that dreadful endless brown, with walls of smoke all round the horizon, shells bursting in the middle distance, a battered trench in the foreground, with a few scattered men climbing out of it, gazing at the camera with expressionless faces, stretcher-bearers stooping on the parapet with their stretchers on their shoulders, odd men straying everywhere like lost sheep across the chocolate wilderness, looking aimless, looking small.