One put up a notice board on the edge of the future. It said, “Trespassers will be pip-squeaked.” The present was the antithesis of everything one had ever dreamed, a ghastly slavery to be borne as best one could. One sought distractions to stop one’s thinking. Work was insufficient. One developed a literary gluttony, devouring cannibalistically all the fiction writers, the war poets, everything that one could lay hands on, developing unconsciously a higher criticism, judging by the new standards set by three years of war--that school of post-impressionism that rubs out so ruthlessly the essential, leaving the unessential crowing on its dunghill. It only left one the past as a mental playground and even there the values had altered. One looked back with a different eye from that with which one had looked forward only four years ago. One had seen Death now and heard Fear whispering, and felt the pulse of a world upheaved by passions. The war itself had taken on a different aspect. The period of peace sectors was over. Russia had had enough. Any day now would see the released German divisions back on the western front. It seemed that the new year must inevitably be one of cataclysmic events. It was not so much “can we attack?” as “will they break through?” And yet trench warfare had been a stalemate for so long that it didn’t seem possible that they could. But whatever happened it was not going to be a joy-ride. We were going to another army. That at least was a point of interest. The batteries, being scattered over half a dozen miles of country, were to march independently to their destinations. So upon the appointed day we packed up and said good-bye to the little priest and interviewed the mayor and haggled over exorbitant claims for damages and impossible thefts of wood and potatoes, wondering all the while how the horses would ever stand up on the frozen roads without a single frost nail in the battery. It was like a vast skating rink and the farrier had been tearing his hair for days. But finally the last team had slithered down to the gun park, hooked in and everything was reported ready. Billeting parties had gone on ahead.