Somerset has gone to the front and Jim--home--Blessed word! A little middy rode up to me today and began by saying "I'm going home.

I'm ORDERED there.

Home-- To England!" He seemed to think I would not understand.

He prattled on like a child saying what luck he had had, that he had been besieged in Ladysmith and seen lots of fighting and would get a medal and all the while he was "just a middy." "But isn't it awful to think of our chaps that were left on the ship" he said quite miserably.

It is a beastly dull war.
The whole thing is so "class" and full of "form" and tradition and worrying over "putties" and etiquette and rank.