I have been up to the neck in work, having temporarily to do what is really three men's work--Brigade Supply Officer, Brigade Requisitioning Officer, and Divisional Forage Purchasing Officer--the last a newly-created post under the direction of the Corps H.Q. It is no joke personally arranging the payments for all the forage in an area fifteen square miles by ten. To-day I found it impossible to continue and do the work efficiently without assistance. It is not so much the getting the forage as the amount of accounting that is involved. I fear I am a poor accountant at best, and the figuring involved in the new scheme (there are five enormous Army forms to fill up weekly, in addition to the ordinary business side of the transactions) has been taxing my energies and has taken up my time long after working hours. Major Knox, Senior Supply Officer of the Division (an old Dulwich man, at one time the Oxford Cricket Captain, and a splendid fellow to boot), spent about six hours to-day with me in completely checking our available resources. The fact is that the hay ration from England has been very considerably reduced for some reason, and we have to make up the deficiency out here, permission having been obtained from the French authorities to purchase and requisition in various Army areas. This permission was for a long time withheld, as the French wanted the local supplies for their own troops. I am finding the War a boring business; the glamour has decidedly worn off. Oh, if we could but get through the Boche lines! As things are at present, there is no thrill and not much scope for initiative. It is just a sordid affair of mud, shell-holes, corpses, grime and filth. Even in billets the thing remains intensely dull and uninspiring. One just lives, eats, drinks, sleeps, and all apparently to no purpose. The monotony is excessive. My chief function in life seems to be the filling up of endless Army forms. I thoroughly sympathise with the recent protest from military men in the _Spectator_ about the "Military Babu," who is occupying an ever larger and larger place in the life of the Army. There will be a revolt one of these days against the fatuity of this eternal filling up of forms for no conceivable purpose.