F! Oh God! oh God of
Heaven! what a MUFF! He is afraid of printed matter, but he controls
himself heroically. He prides himself upon having no 'sense of locality,
confound it!' Prides himself! He went about this village, which is a
little dispersed, at a slight trot, and wouldn't avail himself of the
one-inch map I happened to have. He judged the capacity of each room
with his eye and wouldn't let me measure, even with God's own paces. Not
with the legs I inherit. 'We'll put five fellahs hea!' he said. 'What
d'you want to measure the room for? We haven't come to lay down
carpets.' Then, having assigned men by _coup d'oeil_, so as to congest
half the village miserably, he found the other half unoccupied and had
to begin all over again. 'If you measured the floor space first, sir,' I
said, 'and made a list of the houses--' 'That isn't the way I'm going to
do it,' he said, fixing me with a pitiless eye....

"That isn't the way they are going to do it, Daddy! The sort of thing
that is done over here in the green army will be done over there in the
dry. They won't be in time; they'll lose their guns where now they lose
our kitchens. I'm a mute soldier; I've got to do what I'm told; still,
I begin to understand the Battle of Neuve Chapelle.

"They say the relations of men and officers in the new army are
beautiful. Some day I may learn to love my officer--but not just yet.
Not till I've forgotten the operations leading up to the occupation of
Cheasingholt.... He muffs his real job without a blush, and yet he would
rather be shot than do his bootlaces up criss-cross. What I say about
officers applies only and solely to him really.... How well I understand
now the shooting of officers by their men.... But indeed, fatigue and
exasperation apart, this shift has been done atrociously...."

The young man returned to these criticisms in a later letter.

"You will think I am always carping, but it does seem to me that nearly
everything is being done here in the most wasteful way possible. We
waste time, we waste labour, we waste material, oh Lord! how we waste
our country's money. These aren't, I can assure you, the opinions of a
conceited young man. It's nothing to be conceited about.... We're bored
to death by standing about this infernal little village. There is
nothing to do--except trail after a small number of slatternly young
women we despise and hate. I _don't_, Daddy. And I don't drink. Why have
I inherited no vices? We h