About your book. I’ve read it carefully,

So has Macfaddyen (you remember him,

The light-haired chap who joined us after Loos?);

And candidly, we don’t think much of it.

The piece about the horses isn’t bad;

But all the rest, excuse the word, are tripe—

The same old tripe we’ve read a thousand times.

My grief, but we’re fed up to the back-teeth

With war-books, war-verse, all the eye-wash stuff

That seems to please the idiots at home.