by Conscription's hands to haul them in.

All day they lurk in cover Houndsditch way,

Dodging the copper, and emerge at night

To snatch a breath of Occidental air

And drink the ozone of our Underground.

III.

IV.

V.

FORCE OF HABIT.

The fact that George had been eighteen months in Gallipoli, Egypt and France, without leave home till now, should have warned me. As it was I merely found myself gasping "Shell-shock!"

We were walking in a crowded thoroughfare, and George was giving all the officers he met the cheeriest of "Good mornings." It took people in two ways. Those on leave, blushing to think they had so far forgotten their B.E.F. habits as to pass a brother-officer without some recognition, replied hastily by murmuring the conventional "How are you?" into some innocent civilian's face some yards behind us. Mere stay-at-homes, on the other hand, surprised into believing that they ought to know him, stopped and became quite effusive. As far as I can remember George accepted three invitations to dinner from total strangers rather than explain, and I was included in one of them.

We were for the play that night and I foresaw difficulties at the public telephone, and George's first remark of "Hullo, hullo, is that Signals? Put me through to His Majesty's," confirmed my apprehensions.

Half-an-hour of this kind of thing produced in me a strong desire for peace and seclusion. A taxi would have solved my difficulty (had I been able to solve the taxi difficulty first), but George himself anticipated me by suddenly holding up a private car and asking for a lift. I could have smiled at this further lapse had not the owner, a detestable club acquaintance whom I had been trying to keep at a distance for years, been the driver. He was delighted, and I was borne away conscious of twenty years' work undone by a single stroke.

Peace and seclusion at the club afforded no relief however. George was really very trying at tea. He accused the bread because the crust had not a hairy exterior (generally accumulated by its conveyance in a blanket or sandbag). He ridiculed the sugar ration—I don't believe he has ever been short in his life; and the resources of the place were unequal to the task of providing tea of sufficient strength to admit of the spoon being stood upright in it—a consistency to which, he said, he had grown accustomed. When I left him he was bullying the hall-porter of the club for a soft-nosed pencil; ink, he explained, being an abomination.

I also saw him pay 2½d. for a Daily Mail.

I got a letter from George just before he went back. He patronized me delightfully—seemed more than half a Colonial already. He said he was glad to have seen us all again, but was equally glad to be getting back, as he was beginning to feel a little homesick. He hinted we were dull dogs and treated people we didn't know like strangers. Didn't we ever cheer up? He became very unjust, I thought, when he said that France was at war, but that we had only an Army and Navy.

Incidentally I had to pay twopence on the letter, the postman insisting that George's neat signature in the bottom left-hand corner of the envelope was an insufficient substitute for a penny stamp.

"The raiders came in three suctions."—Evening News.

So that was what blocked the Tubes.

THE LETTER AND THE SPIRIT.

PRIME MINISTER. "YOU YOUNG RASCAL! I NEVER SAID THAT."

NEWSBOY. "WELL, I'LL LAY YER MEANT IT."

Keeper. "ANY BIRDS, SIR?"

Officer (fresh from France). "YES. THREE CRASHED; TWO DOWN OUT OF CONTROL."

THE WATCH DOGS.

LXVI.

MY DEAR CHARLES,—Here is a war, producing great men, and here am I writing to you from time to time about it and never mentioning one of them. I have touched upon Commanding Officers, Brigadiers, Divisional, Corps, even Army Commanders; I have gone so far as to mention the COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF once and I have mentioned myself very many times. But the really great men I have omitted. I mean the really, really great men, without whom the War could not possibly go on, and with whom, I am often led to suppose, the decision remains as to what day Peace shall be declared. Take the A.M.L.O. at —— for example.

Now, Charles, be it understood that I am not saying anything for or against the trade of Assisting Military Landing Officers; I have no feeling with regard to it one way or the other. For all I know it may require a technical knowledge so profound that any man who can master it is already half-way on the road to greatness. On the other hand, it may