his King and Country were not mere names, but a very real part of himself. That he came from the other end of the world to fight for them is, I think, sufficient proof of the realness of his feelings.' In February 1915 he rejoined his old regiment, as captain of the 3rd Battalion, and in France, in April, was transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, which he was commanding in his last fight. At home, in happier years, he was assistant secretary of the Hertfordshire Hunt, and the keenest of sportsmen. He was fond of poetry, but sport came first, and inspires most of the best of his verse. Yet his 'Best of All' was not sport, and it is to her he turns in 'L'Envoi':
...War is good when the stress is past
And the rankling scars grow old,
For its rigours fade and its glamours last
Till the sombre grey turns gold;
And the hunger and thirst and the bitter days
No more in our thoughts find place,
But we mind that we trod life's roughest ways,
And met death face to face;