I am getting on splendidly. I can't tell you how bucked I am with life. It was my third shot to get out of the "great Department," and not only did I succeed in this, but I have obtained that which I had most desired. I had really hardly dared to hope that I should succeed in getting into the Tank Corps. There are a lot of Rugger men among the officers here, including an O.A., Ambrose, who was one of the best of the 2nd XV forwards in 1914. In our company is a splendid fellow called Hedderwick, who played for Loretto and was tried for Cambridge; and a man called Saillard, who was the Haileybury full-back in that match when they beat us at Haileybury by 32 to 12 in Evans's year. You may recollect Saillard getting laid out in the second half, Haileybury continuing without a full-back—with very sound judgment as it turned out, for this enabled them to play us off our legs in the scrum and control the game with eight forwards to seven, and we never got the ball to give to our eight outsides. To sum up, I am in most congenial society and enjoying life hugely.
Naturally, I am working pretty hard, learning my new job. I am determined to make good at it, and I have the conviction that, with hard work and concentration, a man with education behind him can succeed in pretty well anything that he likes. Leave may come in the near future, provided the authorities consider I have made sufficient progress in my new studies; but I have a lot to learn, and it is not my desire to go on leave before I have mastered at least the elements of my new job—very much the reverse, in fact.
February 20th, 1917.
Am having a grand time—up to my eyes in oil, grease and mud from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. I am finding my old hobby of engineering of the greatest value, and my enthusiasm for seeing "the wheels go round" has returned in all its old force. Even the gas-engine and dynamo of famous (or infamous) memory are proving most serviceable to me through the experience I acquired with them—demonstrating again how useful the most recherché of ideas, occupations or hobbies may become. No knowledge is to be despised.
The only fly in the ointment is that an exam. is due for me in a week's time or so—as you know, impending exams. fill me with terror. I have such an accursedly active imagination that I find it impossible to banish from my head the thought, "What if I fail?" I've always been afflicted with this, though I am bound to say that when it came to the point it did not, as far as might be judged by results, affect my actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at bottom to egotism.
There is quite a number of South Welshmen in our lot out here, including some men from Llanelly. There are also a lot of Scotsmen among the officers, fellows of broad speech and dry humour to whom I am much drawn.
You haven't hit on a book on some musical subject for me, have you? I would much like a work dealing with Wagner or Beethoven. It is music that I miss more than anything in the intellectual line. Shall we ever hear the "Ring" again, I wonder? Anyway, it was one of the supreme experiences of my life to have heard it conducted by Nikisch. I regard the "Ring" as one of the world's artistic masterpieces. It is conceived on a scale of unparalleled grandeur, and must be thought of as an organised whole.
I miss the "Proms" and the Sunday Concerts, too—both have done a real national service in popularising the greatest music.
February 28th, 1917.
In the language of Tommy, I am "in the pink" and getting on first-rate. Am delighted to say I passed well in that examination, being marked "very good indeed." I got more than 90 per cent. of marks. I never dared to hope for such success. It would be absurd to deny that I am hugely bucked at the result, but I had had a pretty strenuous training for the exam. I am still engaged in learning, but now in a different department, though of equal interest, and I am glad to say that no examination is involved this time.