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 Provençal, 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 it would be all right. But it's esprit d'esprit. And it's absolutely sickening the things they can do to your mind. I can't stand another term of it.
Always your loving
MICK.