to meet them, I tell them there is a minny, and probably two.  It may not be very cheering to them.  But if the minny is there, well, then I’ve put them 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 Fritz, anyway.

The cavalry are sharpening their swords.

The aeroplanes sail high up in the blue, like hungry hawks.

March 5.

I am probably going off to-morrow.  Now, where do you think?  Paris? 
Madrid?  Anything of that sort?