u can't do it, and whether it's going to be any good to you or
not. Why, you're expected to sleep when they're sleeping, even if the
chap next you snores. Daddy _might_ remember that it's Nicky who likes
mathematics, not me. It's all very well for Nicky when he wants to go
into the Army all the time. There are things _I_ want to do. I want to
write and I'm going to write. Daddy can't keep me off it. And I don't
believe he'd want to if he understood. There's nothing else in the world
I'll ever be any good at.

And there are things I want to know. I want to know Greek and Latin and
French and German and Italian and Spanish, and Old French and Russian
and Chinese and Japanese, oh, and Provencal, and every blessed language
that has or has had a literature. I can learn languages quite fast. Do
you suppose I've got a chance of knowing one of them--really
knowing--even if I had the time? Not much. And that's where being here's
so rotten. They waste your time as if it was theirs, not yours. They've
simply no notion of the value of it. They seem to think time doesn't
matter because you're young. Fancy taking three months over a Greek play
you can read in three hours. That'll give you some idea.

It all comes of being in a beastly form and having to go with the other
fellows. Say they're thirty fellows in your form, and twenty-nine stick;
you've got to stick with them, if it's terms and terms. They can't do it
any other way. It's _because_ I'm young, Mummy, that I mind so awfully.
Supposing I died in ten years' time, or even fifteen? It simply makes me
hate everybody.

Love to Daddy and Don.

Your loving MICK.

P.S.-I don't mean that Hartley major isn't good at Latin verse. He is.
He can lick me into fits when he's bitten _all_ the feathers off.

TUDOR HOUSE.
CHELTENHAM,
_Tuesday_.

DARLING MUMMY:

Daddy _doesn't_ understand. You only think he does because you like him.
It's all rot what he says about esprit de corps, the putridest rot,
though I know he doesn't mean it.

And he's wrong about gym, and drill and games and all that. I don't mind
gym, and I don't mind drill, and I like games. I'm fairly good at most
of them--except footer. All the fellows say I'm fairly good--otherwise I
don't suppose they'd stick me for a minute. I don't even mind Chapel.
You see, when it's only your body doing what the other chaps do, it
doesn't seem to matter. If esprit de corps _was_ esprit de corps