On Monday Lord Methuen kept telling us from the wilderness that he was there and still alive.  The vitality of the enemy, however, concerned us more.  Operations were started early; three shells presumably intended for the Sanatorium landed in Beaconsfield.  The first two fell harmlessly, and the charm associated with the third was no less disappointing—­to an outsider.  The charm surrounding the life of Mr. Rhodes was more tangible; it appeared to extend to the roof that covered him.  The greater part of the day was peaceful; but the Military were the Military, war was their profession; and a fight with the foe being for the moment impracticable, they ingeniously set about renewing the strife with their erstwhile friends—­who, like Sancho Panza, clamoured merely for something to eat.  Our recent experiences had tended to moderate our claims in this regard; we had become inured to bad living; our constitutions had had time to wax weak; our appetites were less hearty.  Matters appertaining to the stomach had reached a sad pass.  Mealie meal, ad lib., was no longer possible, and porridge—­well, the good that it had done lived after it, though we had never acknowledged the actual doing of it.  Rice was issued to Indians exclusively, and, albeit they got nothing else, they had on the whole rather the better of Europeans.  The exhaustion of our golden syrup made the children—­young and “over-grown”—­weep.  We had been reduced to the ignominy of cultivating a toleration of what was called treacle, and even that nauseous compound was drifting towards extinction.  They were hard times for all who could eat their soup; they were harder still for those whom the look of it satisfied.  To these latter a tribute of praise for consistency is due, whatever may be said of their sense.  The pathos of it all was that we got plenty of tea.  We had no milk, and because we needed in consequence all the more sugar we were given less; and as “mealie-pap” had pride of place on the menu the day’s allowance of sugar was only too apt to be recklessly monopolised in giving that a taste.  We were observing a protracted lenten season, a more rigorous fast than any Church prescribes.  The local Catholic Bishop appreciated the gravity of the situation when he suspended the Church’s law against the use of meat on Fridays.  Eat it when you can (which might be only one day in the week, Friday as likely as any other), this edict amounted to in effect.

But we had yet fourteen ounces of bread to preserve us, the whole of which ration was sometimes polished off by mid-day meal time.  There could be no modification in that direction.  Fourteen ounces of bread was needed to sustain life.  But the Military apparently thought otherwise; they suddenly intimated that we must endeavour to keep its lamp aflame on “ten!” The Commissariat reckoned it possible; so the new “Law” was set in motion without compunction.  A number of Fingoes preferred to die at home for choice,