ody will be! Do, please, pull their legs about it for me! But
watch also Sir Eric Geddes. He is one of the most remarkable men of our
time--general, admiral, statesman!

"I am rather amused at the change in the Royal Name: our Royal Family is
now to be known as the Royal House of Windsor! It does strike me as
pandering somewhat to popular prejudice. That King George should change
his name to Windsor cannot change the fact of his ancestry; he is still
a member of the Royal House of Coburg, to which King Albert of Belgium
and King Manoel of Portugal belong: no legal document can alter the
facts of heredity! not that I think any the worse of him because he is a
Coburg. However, the Royal House of Windsor will be peculiarly the
British Royal Family and will probably marry amongst the British
nobility. To that I have no objection whatever, as I have said before.

"No, I have not seen the King or the Queen out here; but I knew that the
Queen was inspecting the hospitals in the town where we get off the
train for this part of the front.

"Talking of hospitals--the Padre says that Barker is not expected to
live many hours longer. The other three are pulling through. We have got
another officer gas casualty to-day. Kerr, who has been suffering from
the effects of gas ever since July 12, has reported sick to-day and has
gone to hospital for a fortnight. One by one we diminish! I feel quite
all right.

"I was talking to Sergeant Brogden--the new gas N.C.O.--last night. He
comes from Middleton Junction. He says that he was in the Church Lads
Brigade at St. Gabriel's.

"I have been reading the leading article about popular scapegoats in the
_Church Times_, and I agree with it. I think the young Duke of Argyll's
attack on Archbishop Davidson in the _Sunday Herald_ was conspicuous
rather for venom than for good taste.

"Earl Curzon's speech in the Lords on Mesopotamia I thought very sober
and statesmanlike indeed. I read it in the _Times_."

The next day (July 20) I wrote home as follows:

"We actually had no working parties to take last night. How considerate
of the Brigade-Major! So we had a good night's sleep. And we have not
done anything particular to-day. We are going to have a change at last.
After twenty days in the line we are going out to-night, and are going
to have a few days in a rest camp some distance behind. The place to
which we are going on this occasion is nothing like as far back as we
were last month; but