Standing in the wheat field, I was watching two good-looking cheery youths at work there. They were the same sort and evidently liked each other; but one belonged to Lustleigh and the other one to Dueren near Cologne. I felt some doubts about the state of things that had put them into hostile armies, to maim or kill each other if they could. On an outlying farm the clock went wrong, and struck one at three and two at four and so on. This was a nuisance, as people were unable to remember which was wrong, the striking or the hands. But the farmer settled it by keeping the clock an hour fast; and then, when it pointed to one and struck eleven, everybody knew that it was twelve. There is much the same confusion now on every farm that has adopted Summer Time. Farm work must be regulated by the sun--some things cannot be done until the dew is off the ground, others cannot be done until the noon-tide heat has passed, and so on with other things all through the day; and the times for doing them have been fixed accordingly. It would be disastrous to do the things an hour earlier: so the times for doing them are all moved on. The clock says five instead of four, but what was timed for five is timed for six. For many years past the Board of Agriculture has called for a return on 4 June in every year with the acreage of the crops and the quantity of live-stock on each farm, including horses but not including asses. In 1920 the War Office called for a return of horses and asses on 4 June. So (I suppose) asses must be useless in agriculture, but of some use in war. Just at that time the War Office was suspected of planning an expedition into southern Russia; and I wondered if a man of genius had been reading in Herodotos how a Persian army made an expedition there, and frightened the enemy clean away by the braying of the asses in its train. Although the War Office and the Board of Agriculture were calling for returns on the same day, 4 June, the War Office did not apply for them direct, or through the Board of Agriculture, but through the Board of Trade. And these authorities differed over mules. The War Office had asked for a return of horses and asses, and said that ‘horse’ included ‘mule’; but the Board of Trade changed this into a return of horses, mules and asses. Seeing that the Board of Trade was acting under an Army Council Regulation made under section 114 of the Army Act, I doubted its having any right whatever to distinguish horse and mule.