LETTERS OF A GENERAL TO HIS SON
(On obtaining a Junior Staff appointment).
MY DEAR BOY,—We both congratulate you heartily on your appointment. Acting on your suggestion, I have hinted to your mother that her anxieties for your safety may be considerably lessened in consequence. You will, of course, continue to address letters likely to cause her any apprehension to my club. On entering this new phase of your career you will not take it amiss if I offer you a few words of practical advice:—
1. Do not neglect your advantages. Always visit the line with a double mission, one for the right of the line and one for the left—and see which they are shelling.
2. If they are strafing all along the line, inspect Transport.
3. Cultivate the detached manner when dealing with all but the very senior. This will give you what is called distinction. Charm will come later.
4. What you don't know, guess. If wrong, guess again.
5. Always put off on to others what you cannot do yourself.
6. What little you do, do well—and see that it gets talked about. Medals are going round, and you may as well have them as anybody else.
7. Belong to a good Mess and invite people who are inclined to criticise.
8. When rung up on a subject of which you know nothing, learn to conduct the conversation so that you abstract the necessary enlightenment from the questioner himself (while appearing to be perfectly conversant with what he is talking about), and, if possible, get him to suggest the answer to his own conundrum. In other words, bluff as in poker (which I trust you don't play).
These are just a few little hints that have occurred to me. Your own good sense will guide you as to the rest. Everybody at home is taking a tremendous interest in the War, I'm glad to say. Hardly a day passes but I am asked at least a dozen times when it is going to be over.
Your affectionate Father, etc., etc.
From an order recently issued at the Front:
"Great care must always be exercised in tethering horses to trees, as they are apt to bark, and thereby destroy the trees."
Wow, wow!
