r is particularly good-looking, but I've learnt from
experience that soundness and strength in a horse are more to be
desired than good looks, especially when campaigning. It is
seldom that you can combine all the qualities. Breed and blood
tell in horses. A well-bred horse will outlast a common one,
because it tries harder. What you want is a judicious mixture of
breed and strength. My two horses are pretty well-bred and have
great strength, and always try hard; so I'm pretty well off, I
reckon.

I observe that those blighted Zeppelins have been about England
again. But really the Zepp. is a colossal failure, whether you
regard it from the point of view of doing military injury, or
damage likely in any way to help Germany in the war, such as
impairing the morale of the British people. The best reply to the
Zepps. is being given day and night on the Somme, where hundreds
of thousands of Boches must at present be wishing they had never
been born. I am surprised they have stuck our bombardment as they
have done, but I am bound to say that the Boche is by no means a
coward.

I am at present deeply immersed in Kant's "Critique of Pure
Reason." It is a great work, and not by any means one to be read
in a hurry. Every line is charged full with deep thinking. It
appeals to me intensely. Kant's was a gigantic mind.

_November 3rd, 1916._

Our Cavalry Brigade has been on the move for some time. In these
circumstances I am always busily employed. Every day that we move
I go on with the brigade advance parties, go round the billets
that the troops are going to occupy, and make all arrangements
with the French inhabitants for a plentiful supply of fuel, straw
and forage to be available for the troops when they arrive. The
weather recently has been the reverse of clement. The first
stages of the move were accomplished in pitiless rain, the more
recent ones in weather fairly dry, but bitterly cold. Not that
vicissitudes of weather worry me. I never enjoy life so much as
when I'm fully occupied with hard work like that I am now doing,
which is really useful and responsible.

The question of Ireland remains a perplexing one. We have two
Irishmen in our mess, one a Unionist, the other a Nationalist.
The