It’s a most dreadful nuisance.  They used to get on so well together.  I hope they will leave that curious little Tank alone.  Swallow is as lame as a cat now.  The accursed female is very exasperating, I fear.  Hunt quite irritated me for a moment when he remarked, after the incident:  “Oh, it’s all right, sir.  She was in one of her moods.”  I pointed out to him that it was not all right.  Whereupon he took it into his head that I was strafing him, and muttered sulkily:  “Well, sir, I must say I never did like Abroad.”

Which made me laugh to such an extent that I got a sort of fit of laughing (don’t you know?) and couldn’t stop.  Eventually I had to go away.  He looked so comic and so dejected, and his use of the word Abroad (as if it were a country in itself) always makes me laugh idiotically.  I haven’t seen him since, and it will be difficult to explain the apparent frivolity.

Things have been very complicated just lately owing to our having to make arrangements about taking over this new bit of line.

December 5.

[Sidenote:  CONCERNING WORK]

One of the many things the war has taught us, I think, is the comparative equality of all work.  Work depends almost entirely on the actual number of hours per diem, don’t you think?

Certainly brain work is more tiring than spade work.  But I’ll guarantee that the man who does eight hours’ brain work is not much more tired than the man who does eight hours’ spade work.

The only difference is that open-air work means better health, and consequently more power to work long hours.

But I really do believe that, for example, a nurse’s day’s work (either for wounded or babies) is just as hard as a bricklayer’s day, or a bank clerk’s day, or an engine driver’s day.  And I believe that the various degrees of skill, necessary for doing any job really well, are not very different on the whole.  Different, yes, but not very different.  A General’s job is difficult, but not much more difficult than a nurse’s job.

And so I believe all jobs ought to be paid on a rather more equal footing.  Not on an equal footing, but a rather more equal footing than now.

Do you agree?

December 6.

Cathedrals, the earth, the sky, and all that in them is—­those are the things that rest and soothe one out here.  Thank God for cathedrals!  How splendid of Litlin, to be getting Bunny taught reels.  I do trust she will give lots of attention to it.

After seeing a certain amount of human misery and so forth, I believe more than ever that the whole aim of the world is in the direction of Joy.  And as dancing is one of the most primitive expressions of joy, give me dancing, says I.

This is all said in the middle of dictation of orders, and so I expect it’s ungrammatical, but you know what I mean.

December 7.