em on their guard; and if it isn't there, well, they can laugh at the
work of the staff, and there's no harm done. People don't realize the
awful strain and responsibility and hard work of staffs. It's sometimes
a nightmare. Think of it in this way: I make a slip. A dozen men get
killed. When the Push comes, I make another slip, and a hundred men get
killed. Perhaps more. All the work of the lazy and incompetent staff!
But if the staffs are lazy and incompetent, then, for goodness' sake,
let's put more energetic and more competent people in their places. But
where are these more competent people? In the divisions? in the
battalions? But that is exactly where the present staffs came from! And
they are the very people who originally jibed at the staffs! Well,
anyhow, the war will end some day.

_February 21._

[Sidenote: THE WILD DUCK]

_Re_ America. It doesn't look much as if they were coming in now, does
it? However, one of the Scots Guards gave me June as the end of the war.
He offered me 10 to 1 in francs; but, as I am always rather muddled as
to whether that means that he gives me 10 francs if I win, or I give him
1 franc if I lose, or what, I declined to bet. I expect he thinks I
don't bet on principle. But, anyway, let's hope he wins.

Leave is off at present.

The worst of this game is that now I feel I want to do it all myself. I
really do know a fair amount about the Boche lines, and I long to spend
a day wandering about there taking notes!

I was up yesterday afternoon trying to find out a certain T.M. battery,
and what should fly by quite close and quite unconcerned but a duck! We
were not very high, and it was very misty. The duck just appeared, with
his neck stretched out, eager and oblivious. And then vanished into the
mist again. I was thinking about that duck too much to find out what I
wanted. Anyway, it was a fruitless journey. But flying amongst clouds is
very beautiful. Sometimes we got above the clouds, to where the sun was
functioning away as efficiently as ever. The clouds looked like millions
of feather beds.

_March 2._

I have been doing some drawings of R.F.C. officers. They love being
"took" out here, and my office is rapidly degenerating into a club,
which makes work no easier.

Well, you see from the papers what is happening. The Boche retires to
the Hindenburg Line, and we follow.

I should so love to tell you all about it, but Mum's the word. A great
moral defeat for poor