The cold weather now prevalent must add yet a fresh discomfort to those that are being endured by our men in the trenches. I cannot recollect a cold spell of such severity continuing for so long a time. We had a heavy snowfall a fortnight back, and since then there has been incessant and exceptionally hard frost. The roads in places are wellnigh impassable owing to frozen snow. Going down one steep hill to-day in our motor-car we all but turned completely over, as at a curve in the road the car-wheels, instead of answering to the steering gear, skidded on the frozen surface, and the car swung completely round on its axis, finishing by facing the opposite way to that in which we were travelling. Where the roads are not very slippery they are as hard as iron. A curious result is that you have a thick dust raised over a snow-covered landscape and in bitterly cold weather! I was much interested in the Balliol College pamphlet and the Master's accompanying letter. Balliol appears to have done even more than its part in the War. Did you see that the Brakenbury Scholarship in History for 1916 was taken by a chap from Gresham School, Holt? I often wonder whether I shall ever go up to Oxford. Almost needless to say, to go there would be the crowning joy of my life, but I cannot help thinking that circumstances will render it impossible. Still, we will hope for the best. One thing I mean to do after the War is to learn Russian thoroughly and to visit Russia. I am not at all sure that travelling is not the best of all Universities. The great disadvantage of a 'Varsity is the insularity of mind which it is apt to breed. Its rigid observance of ancient customs, its cult of "form," the fact that it is the almost exclusive monopoly of the rich, the aristocracy and the upper middle-class; above all, its contempt for the learning of modern times and studied disregard of modern languages--all these features help to make the 'Varsity as insular as the most insular of all English national institutions. On the other hand, by its genuine intellectuality, by its cult of the beautiful and the abstract, by its scorn of the sordid business side of modern civilisation, by its enthusiasm for athletics and by its traditions of duty and of patriotism, the 'Varsity remains, to my mind, one of the most healthful influences in modern British life.