Your minds can be at rest as regards my safety for a few weeks at least. I’ve been collared for fair, but I think I’ll manage to get free again presently. I suppose you’ll say that I’m a donkey to want so much to get back to the Front; perhaps I am—the war will last quite long enough for every man in khaki to get very much more of it than he can comfortably stomach. The proper soldierly attitude is to take every respite as it turns up and be grateful for it. But then I’m not a professional soldier. I think in saying that I’ve laid my finger on the entire reason for the splendour of our troops—that they’re not professional soldiers, but civilian idealists. Your professional soldier isn’t particularly keen on death—his game is to live that he may fight another day. Our game is to fight and fight and fight so long as we have an ounce of strength left. My major and myself are all that are left of the officers in my battery. A great many of our best men are gone. They need us back to help them out. Here’s a story of stories—one which answers all the questions one hears asked as to whether the Army doesn’t lower a man’s morals and turn saints into blackguards. When we were on the Somme, a batch of very worthless-appearing remounts arrived at our wagon-lines direct from England. When they were paraded before us, they made the rottenest impression—they looked like molly-coddles whom the Army had cowed. Among them was a particularly inoffensive-looking young man who had been a dental student, whom, if the Huns could have seen him as a sample of the kind of reinforcements we were getting, they would certainly have taken new courage to win the war. All the officers growled and prayed God for a consignment of the old rough-and-tumble knockabout chaps who came out of gaols, from under freight-trains, and from lumber-camps to die like gentlemen—the only gentlemanly thing some of them ever did, I expect—with the Canadian First Contingent. A few weeks later we sent back to the wagonlines for a servant to be sent up to the guns, two of our batmen having been killed and a third having been returned to duty. The wagon-line officer sent us up this fellow with the following note: “I’m sending you X. He’s the most useless chap I have—not bad, but a ninny. I hope he’ll suit you.” He didn’t. He could never carry out an order correctly, and seemed scared stiff: by any N.C.O. or officer. We got rid of him promptly. When he returned to the wagon-lines, he was put on to all the fatigues and dirty jobs.