I assure you that just behind the firing-line people are minting money out of our occupation. Not only do they get paid regularly if British troops are billeted on them, but they can name their own prices for milk, beer, eggs, etc., and all those other things that Tommy is anxious for, and for which he can afford to pay. He is, I think, paid three times as much as either the French or the Boche soldiers. True, I have met some pitiful cases of refugeeism, but to a very large number of people in Northern France the war is nothing but somewhat of a nuisance. Of course, where they do feel it is in their own terrible casualty lists. I have known family after family in the little villages who have lost one or two sons. In many communes one finds that the Mayor has been killed while serving at the front, and a deputy acts in his stead. The Mayor of the place where we are now stationed has three sons fighting, one at Verdun. I had an agreeable chat a few days back with the local schoolmaster, who was home on short leave from the trenches. It is curious that only _The Bystander_ and _Punch_ should have succeeded in catching the atmosphere of "Somewhere in France." Many of the war correspondents, brilliantly though they write, have missed it altogether. John Buchan is not so bad, when he writes soberly, but he will let his imagination run away with him. Talking of writers, what a delightful thing was that article of Zangwill's in the _Daily Chronicle_ on "The Perils of Walking in War-time"! Its brilliant satire, firm grasp of facts, lively humour and racy style quite took my fancy. I have had some interesting chats with some of the old soldiers in our division about Mons, the Marne and the Aisne, and all "those brave days of old." One chap, now acting as a clerk at Headquarters, wears the ribbons of the D.C.M. and French Medaille Militaire for swimming a river (on the retreat from Mons) amid a tempest of shot and shell, and giving warning to a party of our people on the other side who were in the greatest danger of being surrounded--and quite oblivious of the fact--by the Boches who had forced the passage of a bridge some way off. This brave fellow led his menaced comrades to another bridge, and so enabled them all to get clear. The Supply Officer of one of our brigades is F. P. Knox, a Dulwich man, who captained the old school at cricket back in 1895 or so and I believe led Oxford to victory after that. His brother you may know--N. A. Knox, the famous fast bowler.