ember, half-rations, more or less regular bombardment, no proper
billets, no shops, no letters, and very hard work!

My leg is very decidedly better now. I can walk half-a-mile without
feeling any aches, and soon hope to do a mile. There is an obstinate
little puffy patch which won't disappear just beside the knee-cap: but
the M.O. says I may increase my walk each day up to the point where it
begins to ache.

We have had no rain here for nearly a month; but there are light
clouds about which make the most gorgeous sunsets I ever saw.

* * * * *

EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.

_December, 1915._

I am looking forward to this trek. Four months is a large enough slice
of one's time to spend in Amarah, and there will probably be more
interest and fewer battles on this trek than could be got on any other
front. The Censor has properly got the breeze up here, so I probably
shan't be able to tell you anything of our movements or to send you
any wires: but I will try and let you hear something each week; and if
we are away in the desert, we generally arrange--and I will try
to--for some officer who is within reach of the post to write you a
line saying I am all right (which he hears by wireless) but can't
write. That is what we have been doing for the people at Kut. But
there are bound to be gaps, and they will tend to get more frequent
and longer as we get further.

No casualties from "A" Coy. for several days: so I hope its main
troubles are over.

* * * * *

EXTRACT OF LETTER TO P.C.

_Xmas Day_, 1915.

... I'm so glad Gwalior was a success. I think a good native state is
the most satisfactory kind of Government for India in many ways; but
(a) so few are really good, if you go behind the scenes and think of
such fussy things as security of life and property, taxation and its
proportion to benefits received, justice and administration,
education, freedom of the subject, and so on. (b) It spells stagnation
and the abandonment of the hope of training the mass of the people to
responsibility; but I think that is an academic rather than practical
point at present.

Christmas is almost unbearable in war-time: the pathos and the
reproach of it. I am thankful that my Company is at Kut on
half-rations. I don't of course mean that: but I'm thankful to be
spared eating roast beef and plum pudding heartily, as these dear
pachyderms are now doing with