p.

3.

doing things which were normal & every day in the other
one. He is right, up to point, because the other Coy is
criminally slack & slipshod. But Carsenty was not spoiled
there - he's been a liar & a bluffer for years & is quite
incurably lazy & he will be a good riddance.
And now I am setting about this chap Dikman.
It's dreadful, isn't it? But they should not make the
mistake of commissioning these people. Any one of my
Sgts would make a better officer than either of these
two people.

I told you before that Dikman is mad - I'm sure of it
now - I'll give you some good laughs about him when
I come home. This is bad enough but he has an
overwhelming desire to be popular with the men & so
shuts his eye when they do things wrong & generally
allows them to do whatever they want: I have warned
him in extremely plain language about this twice & explained
at length the importance of discipline & order, & the exact
relations which should exist between officer & man.
The final straw came yesterday when my C.S.M.
visited the Detachment of which Dikman is in charge.
One of my corporals reported to the CSM that Dikman had
had him into his tent & explained how it hurt him to
have to punish men & that he had wanted to go on
well with the men & make life easy & pleasant for
them. But that he was forced to do this by the C.O. &
he wanted the men to understand this. He then told
the corporal never to tell anything to the CSM
because the CSM passed everything on to the
C.O. with the result that he got [sockets?]