"It was hard, but what _esprit de corps_ and what discipline those rough ways taught us. We shall never see a regiment again like the Lennox of 1914. The officer of to-day has seen active service, it’s true, but as a matter of fact it is quite sufficient in war to have good health and no more imagination than a fish. It is in peace-time that one ought to judge a soldier." "You remind me," said the doctor, "of the sergeant-major in the Guards who said: ’How I wish the war would finish so that we could have real manoeuvres once more!’" This evening, while the gramophone was raging, I forced myself to translate into French Rudyard Kipling’s admirable poem, "If." I showed it in English to Parker whom it describes so well, and we talked about books. I made the mistake of mentioning Dickens. "I detest Dickens," said the major. "I never could understand how anyone could find him interesting. His books are all stories of the lower classes and Bohemians. I do not want to know how they live. In the whole of Dickens’ works there is not one gentleman. No, if you wish to know the _chef-d’oeuvre_ of English novels read ’Jorrocks.’" January 13th. A little English telephonist who came to mend our apparatus said to me, "Telephones are like women, sir. No one really knows anything about them. One fine day, something goes wrong; you try to find out why, no good, you swear, you shake them up a bit and all is well." January 14th. At dinner an Irish colonel remarked: "I am very annoyed; during my last leave I rented a house for my family, and now my wife writes that it is haunted. The owners really ought to tell one these things." "Perhaps they did not know it," said our indulgent colonel. "They knew it very well. When my wife went to complain, they got very confused, and ended by owning up. One of their great-grandmothers has walked from the drawing-room to her old bedroom for the last hundred and fifty years. They tried to excuse themselves by saying she was perfectly harmless. That is possible and I am quite willing to believe it, but it is none the less annoying for my wife. Do you think I can cancel my lease?" I here risked a sceptical remark, but the whole Mess jumped on me. Irish ghosts are scientific facts. "But why do phantoms love Irish houses more than others?" "Because," said the Irish colonel, "we are a very sensitive race and we enter into communication with them more easily." And he crushed me with technical arguments on wireless telegraphy. January 15th. The colonel, having found out this morning that a motor-ambulance was going into Ypres, took me with him. In front of the hospital we found ourselves wedged in by a terrible block of waggons, under a fierce bombardment. A horse with its carotid artery cut by a bit of shell, and only held up by the shafts, was writhing in agony close by us. The drivers were swearing. Nothing to do but wait patiently in our car, shaken by explosions.