Dear Mother: 

Have been in receipt of your several letters including one from Jessie containing a draft for 4L, 11sh, 10d. Thanks----

I got that parcel containing tobacco, mitss, hdkfs, etc last night and it was very acceptable.  I feel that you are too good to me here in England where so far I'm practically out of danger.  I appreciate the honey very much.  It is one of the nicest things a fellow can get in the army.  We have an abnormal tast for sweet things and the boys in France have it more pronouncedly than we have here becasue we have access to shops and restaurants.--But I believe they are going to prohibit solkers eating at weill in restaurants and eating houses in order to conserve the food supply.  Food is scarce and I've been studying the econimical situation since noon. (This is Saturday) and made up my mind to write home and tell the boys to sow every available acre in crop, even if it is a little late in seeding when you get this.  I should have written sooner on this subject but papers and letters from home of late just opend my eyes to the necssity in Canada for the masimum production on the farms.  Not only is it of national importance but it will have to pay to produce it as prices are soon going to soar until it may be necessary to have a food dictator to regulate prices in Canada as they have in England.

There are acres and acres of park and pasture here in England owned by the aristocratic old families but they are busy cultivating much of it and breaking it up into plots for people to cultivate inpotatoes and vegetable crops.  We don't know how scarce the food shortage may become but the fact remains that America must be the granary for Europe in the next few years.

Jimmie (Paterson) is well and had a very enjoyable trip to Ayr-- got his pass estended two days to go to see his brohter Graham who is on light duty with his home unit in Glasgow while convalescing.  I gave Jim his share of the parcel but he has practically quit the pipe, making a specialty of cigarettes.  I have been doing the same to an increasingly large extent but the recent tobacco shipments from home, from Everett Mallough (some Hudson Bay) and 1/2 lb. old chum from Baillie, with your two boxes of Tobacco, I will have little use for cigarettes for some time to come and at the same time can afford to be magnanimous towars my less fortunate brothers in arms. 

There is a corporal, Jock Devlin, who sleeps beside me who has been nineteen months at the front, coming over with the original 15th Battalion, in the First Canadian contingent, who is the most original characater I have ever met.  He has seven wounds but is outwardly just as good a man as ever.  Areturned soldier who is a segeant here, told me that he practically goes mad when he his in battle.  And without swank he can tell the most stirring storires I have ever heard.  I believe every word he tells about it-- he isn't a learned man and has a rich Scotch brogue and it's wonderful what he has seen and done and come through alive.

I've met some of the most ignorant men I ever saw in the army and others without and education are really gentlemen by instinct.  But themost literary man I've ever met is a C.Q.M.S with this battalion.  He has peculiar religious ideas and has a wonderful knowledge of psychic phenomena which he likes to talk about and I'm about theonly man he can find who can understand him.  (C.Q.M.S. Stanford, an architec a member of the Dicken's Fellowhip, etc, whose son I taught at Kent School in 1918-1919 C.E.S)  But what I like to do is get him talking Browning, Carlyle, and most of the noted poets.  It is truly a liberal education to hear him and it makes me feel wonderfully ignorant altho' he actually thinks I'm an educated man along literary, classical, historical, and philisophical lines.  He attended Oxford at one time and incivil life is an architect.  I'm very thankful I burnt the midnight oil studying up Queen's work extra-murally--if only because of the ability it gives me appreciate the companionship of naturally big menn like C.Q.M.S. Stanford.

There is a returned sergeant in this Batt. who was over in the 13th Highlanders who lectures on the Lewis Gun.  ( I was no. 2 on a Lewis Gun, C.E.S.) and he is a marvel.  He can make even the most inattentive appreciate the work on the Machine Gun.  He was a Methodist minister in Alberta somewhere I believe.  he, too, I admire very much, but he is very reticent about himself and lives more or less to himself.

It is funny the Scotch accent which predominates throughout this unit.  I'll have to leave a description of it till some later letter writing as it's beastly cold here so far from the fire and Cook House is just going.  thee are "Jocks" innumerable aroudn here.  Jock Stewart ( a motorman on the Toronto streetcars, CES) is a grey-headed old sergeant who occupies a bunk beside Jimmie.  He reminds me very much of father, from his build and paternal ways.  In respect for hsi grey hair I've even stopped calling him such a familiar name as Jock and dutifully use his proper title, "John".

There isn't much news in this letter but I must not conclude without ansere the questions about my Dungannon activities in the linen of affairs from the heart.  I'm indeed please you mentioned it, but will refrain from saying anything as I've much more important things that demand my attention.  But, Mother, you now that there are two things that make me peevish when remonstrated with or attacked in any verbally hostile manner either facetiously or chidingly.---

I haven't your letter by me and don't know what questions you asked.  Oh, by the way tell Aunt Sarah to forward my address to John (Wilton) as he may be located somewhere in this area as a military district is called here. Send me his if you want.

And another thing don't address parcels or letters c/o J. C. Paterson Ayr.  We have a good mail service here and you will be safe in using my military address.  That parcel was opened by customs and the wrote asking her whether to send it to Ayr or to my unit.  She told them to send it here because if they sent it to Ayr there would have been several shillings of duty to pay on it.  Don't send anything except very important letters via Ayr, as I don't want to give them to much trouble.  There is on duty on parcels to soldiers unless sent to a civilian address.  I must away and eat. Love to all, Cannon.