An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 201 Russians and the war babies), and I wrote to the "Daily Press" thus:- Does not the fact that quite recently the Gerwa11s seew disposed to agree to Englaud having tlle supremacy of the sea rather corroborate those who say they have seen airships hover– iug over us? If they have satisfieci themselves that they actually have the supremacy of the air and the power to destroy arsenals and warship alike they can well afford to drop the expense of com– peting with us unnecessarily on the water. A very cold beginning to the year in 1914. By the 10th of January I bad finished the fir t part of Chaucer, and left copy at the printers. Missing train to Aylsham on the 15th January, I bad to walk there, taking rhr. 44min. to cover 5 miles, or in plain English at the rate of 3 miles au hour. This was really the beginning of my end. Early in the year there was au amusing controversy in the '' Daily Press•· anent a miraculous slaughter of hares, said by Sir R. Winfrey, the Radical M.P., to have taken place at Pickenham, when 500 or 600 hares were said to have been killed by a man and two dogs in a 67 acre harvest :field of barley. In this I joined, and I think demonstrated the outrageous impossibility of the tale, pointing out that recently "a carefully promoted battue by skilled gunners over 4,000 acres at Weasenham only produced as many hares as a few harvesters and stickmen are supposed to have obtained in a single field of 67 acres," that as Sir R. Winfrey admitted the field was open and unwired for very nearly half of its boundary, and that it took two days to reap, we were "asked to believe that 300 (he began with "500) hares and leverets would, after hearing the noise " of the machines for so long, remain in a field run over "by two greyhounds when they could have escaped at any " hour on practically two sides of the field." As a matter of fact I ascertained that 12 bares only were killed, and the whole story was clearly an election canard started for political purposes. I regret to see that just now (November, 1916) the same man bas had the indecency, in these war times, to try to raise strife in the House of Commons as to the game question . On the 17th Betty came home again to say good-bye and left by early train on Monday. Next week was very cold indeed and I could hardly keep warm with any