4/11/16
My dear Father
After a week’s interval a large and very welcome mail came in today including your letter of 25th. I was glad to learn you are quite all right again and none the worse for your cycle accident.
We keep up to about the same level of work so far. I was glad to get October over with some prospect of a diminution before long. Today for the first day since I returned I got everything finished by 4 pm and was able to get a walk after tea. It is cool, with a nice drying wind, and good for walking.
You will be glad to get all the fruit marketed. I suppose Blenheims are worth 10/- or 12/- a pot this year.
Since you wrote, the Roumanian situation looks a trifle better but I agree with you that Germany has still power to strike hard and doubtless she has chosen that spot as the most promising; the French success at Verdun is most gratifying. I hope with dryer weather we may yet hear more from further north.
I’m glad Mrs Brown Constable’s visit was so successful. Cyril will be pleased, I’m sure. I gather from a later letter from Mary that Cyril has been drafted temporarily to another regiment.
Mary tells me our tenants are holding on till February, and perhaps later, so that is satisfactory. When they go out we’ll have to store the furniture till the happy time when another home is started.
I’m very pleased to hear how well the War Savings Association is going, it must be quite a considerable business receiving the money each week. I hope Ethel finds her committee helpful.
Mary sent me some of Judy’s snaps of Baby including a very pleasing one of you holding her, a little too high up on the plate, but it doesn’t spoil the likenesses.
We find an additional room in the Mess-hut a great advantage, with as a rule about 10 fellows in the mess, one room for meals and everything is very close quarters, and every other hospital had better treatment. Our CO is better able to get things done than his predecessor.
I wonder what the Treasury people have in mind in their loan policy. This 6% issue looks like a gamble on an early peace, and one would have thought a longer dated loan at 5%, a point or two below par, would have been a great success, and even with the cost of conversion of previous War Loan hardly more expensive. If next year a big loan is necessary, as is to be expected, they will hardly be able to give terms much less than 6% and it looks as if they are spoiling their own market to some extent.
I daresay George’s regiment have been exchanged for another, one would not expect any very active operations in the winter where he has gone.
I shall like to look over the silver next time I am at home. You will be glad to get it divided and sent off I daresay. Please thank May for her letter which I want to answer soon. Lately I have been much off letter writing – if the causes of delayed mails are not repeated I hope to improve.
With love to all.
Your affectionate son
Arthur
