“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 had a fight here yesterday—­sheer boredom.  Ortheris has a swollen lip, and another private has a bad black eye.  There is to be a return match.  I perceive the chief horror of warfare is boredom....

“Our feeding here is typical of the whole system.  It is a system invented not with any idea of getting the best results—­that does not enter into the War Office philosophy—­but to have a rule for everything, and avoid arguments.  There is rather too generous an allowance of bread and stuff per man, and there is a very fierce but not very efficient system of weighing and checking.  A rather too generous allowance is, of course, a direct incentive to waste or stealing—­as any one but our silly old duffer of a War Office would know.  The checking is for quantity, which any fool can understand, rather than for quality.  The test for the quality of army meat is the smell.  If it doesn’t smell bad, it is good....

“Then the raw material is handed over to a cook.  He is a common soldier who has been made into a cook by a simple ceremony.  He is told, ’You are a cook.’  He does his best to be.  Usually he roasts or bakes to begin with, guessing when the joint is done, afterwards he hacks up what is left of his joints and makes a stew for next day.  A stew is hacked meat boiled up in a big pot.  It has much fat floating on the top.  After you have eaten your fill you want to sit about quiet.  The men are fed usually in a large tent or barn.  We have a barn.  It is not a clean barn, and just to make it more like a picnic there are insufficient plates, knives and forks. (I tell you, no army people can count beyond eight or ten.) The corporals after their morning’s work have to carve.  When they have done carving they tell me they feel they