The early months of humiliation and disaster ended my generation's boyhood. Until that time there had been nothing to disturb us; the splendour of our national might seemed enduring, and it needed the severest of our first Transvaal reverses to remind us that the Jubilee pageant was over and our lath-and-plaster reputation being tested by fire and steel. Tom Dainton invited me to a solitary breakfast on Sunday and mentioned his father's decision to raise a troop of yeomanry. We made inquiries about the university commissions that were being granted, and, though I was rejected for shortness of sight, Tom passed with triumphant ease and dropped out of Oxford for more than two years. At the end of the Christmas vacation came the news of Lord Loring's death. Possibly because his son and I were living together, possibly by the shock of contrast with the peaceful, untroubled life we had led formerly, the war cloud loomed oppressively over me during my first year, so that the ordinary existence in college seemed curiously artificial. We might have been playing in some indifferent show at a country fair, with passers-by who refused to interest themselves in us. After a year the country's prospects in the war began to brighten; we grew used to the casualty lists and masterly retreats; the centre of gravity changed, and Oxford began to resume her normal life. At the end of my third year we were to have the unusual sight of men, who had been away fighting for two years or more in another continent, returning to resume their position as undergraduate. I was spending the beginning of the Long Vacation with Loring at Chepstow, when we received a wire inviting us both to Crowley Court to welcome the two Daintons back from the Front. Neither Loring nor I had been to Hampshire since leaving Melton, and, as Mrs. Dainton pledged herself that "all the old party" would be invited, we accepted with alacrity. Sutcliffe, who was doing a vacation course at Cambridge, broke into his work to join us, and Draycott was on the platform when we arrived at Waterloo.