Our working party having finished its duties, I have now been appointed Requisitioning Officer to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. This is much better than that horrible job with the Supply Column. The war news is splendid, but some glorious men have "gone West." We are paying a big price for victory. The death of Raymond Asquith is a great tragedy. A brilliant life extinguished, one that gave promise of great things. I had a shock to-day on reading in the paper that my old friend H. Edkins,[13] who took a Junior Scholarship at Dulwich in the same year as I did, is reported among the missing. He was an able and gifted fellow. Do you remember how well he sang at the school concert in December, 1914? With all my heart I hope he's all right. I wish you would get for me Professor Moulton's book, "The Analytic Study of Literature." [Footnote 13: Lieutenant Harrison Edkins, 1st Surrey Rifles. Born, July 5th, 1896. Killed, September 15th, 1916. At Dulwich he was captain of fives; Editor of _The Alleynian_, 1915. In December, 1914, he won the Charles Oldham Classical Scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.] WITH THE 2nd CAVALRY BRIGADE _October 3rd, 1916._ Here I am a Requisitioning Officer again, this time for another Cavalry Brigade. I was sorry not to get back to my old comrades. Still, it is a change to work with new regiments. This Cavalry Brigade is a famous body of troops. To it belongs the honour of having been the first lot of Britishers in action in the war. While I like my duties, I am beginning to feel restive, and am longing to get back to the real battle zone. What think you of our new war machines? [Tanks were first employed on September 15, 1916.--_Editor._] I have had many opportunities of studying them on the move. One would scarcely believe it possible they could go over ground such as I have seen them comfortably traverse. No obstacle seems insurmountable to them. They are quaint-looking things, but, in spite of the Press correspondents, they are no more like to, or suggestive of, primeval monsters than a cow resembles a chaff-cutter. Ireland is an enigma and no mistake. The man who settles the Irish problem will go down to history. The difficulty would appear to be to effect any _rapprochement_ of the English and Irish national points of view, these having been determined by the different environments of the two races. In national life as in nature the law of natural selection operates.