require no technical knowledge at all, and, the whole of a Military Landing Officer's duties being limited to watching other people working, the Assistant Military Landing Officer's task may consist of nothing more complicated than watching the Military Landing Officer watching the military land. If this is so, the work may be so simple that, once a man has satisfied the very rigid social test to be passed by all aspirants to so distinguished a position, he must simply be a silly ass if he doesn't automatically become a great man, after a walk or two up and down the quay. I repeat, I know nothing whatever of the calling of A.M.L.O., and I could not tell you without inquiry whether it is an ancient and honourable profession or an unscrupulous trade very jealously watched by the Law. I have some friends in it and I have many friends out of it, and the former should not be inflated with conceit nor the latter unduly depressed when I pronounce the deliberate opinion that the best known and greatest thing in the B.E.F. is without doubt the A.M.L.O. at ——.

Though it is months since I cast eyes on him, I can see him now, standing self-confidently on his own private quay, with the most chic of Virginian cigarettes smouldering between his aristocratic lips and the very latest and most elegant of Bond Street Khaki Neckwear distinguishing him from the mixed crowd about him. Every one else is distraught; even matured Generals, used to the simple and irresponsible task of commanding troops in action, are a little unnerved by the difficulties and intricacies of embarking oneself militarily. He on whom all the responsibility rests remains aloof. A smile, half cynical, plays across his proud face. He knows he has but to flick the ash from his cigarette and the Army will spring to attention and the Navy will get feverishly to work. He has but to express consent by the inclination of his head and sirens will blow, turbine engines will operate as they would never operate for anybody else, thousands of tons of shipping will rearrange itself, and even the sea will become less obstreperous and more circumspect in its demeanour, adjusting, if need be, its tides to suit his wishes.

I take it my condition is typical when I am "proceeding" (one will never come and go again in our time; one will always proceed)—when I am proceeding to the U.K. The whole thing is too good to believe, and I don't believe it till I have some written and omnipotent instructions, in my pocket and am actually moving towards the sea. The youngest and keenest schoolboy returning home for his holidays is a calm, collected, impassionate and even dismal man of the world compared to me. I see little and am impressed by nothing; all things and men are assumed to be good, and none of them is given the opportunity of proving itself to be the contrary. As for the A.M.L.O. at any other port but this one, I remark nothing about him except his princely generosity in letting me have an embarcation card. He is just one more good fellow in the long series of good fellows who have authorised my move. I am borne out to sea in a dream—a dream of England and all that England means to us, be that a wife or a reasonable breakfast at a reasonable hour. Not until I am on my way back does it occur to me that landing and transport officers have identities, and by that time I have lost all interest in transport and landing and officers and identities and everything else.

At the port of ——, however, it is very different. I may arrive on the quay in a dream, but I'm at once out of it when I have caught sight of Greatness sitting in its little hut with the ticket window firmly closed until the arrival of the hour before which he has disposed that it shall not open. Thoughts of home are gone; I can think of nothing but Him. When at last I have obtained his gracious, if reluctant, consent to my obeying the instructions I have, and have got on to the boat, I deposit my goods hurriedly, anywhere, and fight for a position by the bulwark nearest the quay, from which I may gaze at his august Excellency for the few remaining hours during which it is given us to linger in or near our well-beloved France.

How came it about, I ask myself, that the Right Man got to be in the Right Place? It cannot have been merely fortuitous that he was not thrust away into some such obscure job as the command of an Expeditionary Force or the control of the counsels of the Imperial General Staff. It must have been the deliberate choice of a wise chooser; Major-General Military Landing himself, the SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR on his own, even His MAJESTY in person? Or was a plebiscite taken through the length and breadth of the British Isles when I was elsewhere, and did Britain, thrilled to the core, clamour for him unanimously?

I watch him keep a perturbed and restless Major from the line waiting while he finishes his light-hearted badinage with a subordinate. It is altogether magnificent in its sheer sangfroid. Why is it that such a one is labelled merely A.M.L.O., when he should obviously be the M.L.O.? He has his subordinate, happily insignificant and obsequiously proud to serve. Let the subordinate be the a.m.l.o., and let It, Itself, be openly acknowledged to be It, Itself.

By the way, where is his M.L.O.? Has anybody ever seen him? I haven't. Does he exist?... Has he been got rid of?

There is a convenient crevice between the quay and the boat with a convenient number of feet of water at the bottom of it. Is the M.L.O. down there, and is the "A.M.L.O." brassard but the modesty of true greatness?

If the M.L.O. has been thrown down there, who threw him?

Was it my idol, the A.M.L.O., in a moment of exasperation with his M.L.O.?

Or was it the M.L.O., in a moment of exasperation with my idol, the A.M.L.O.?

Yours ever,
HENRY.

Old Lady. "IS THIS THE RESULT OF A BOMB, CONSTABLE?"

Constable (fed up). "BLESS YOU, NO, MA'AM. THE GENT THAT LIVES HERE'S GOT HAY FEVER."

"Naval Officer's (Minesweeping) Wife would be grateful for the opportunity of purchasing a Baby's Layette of good quality at a very reasonable price."—Morning Post.

Our congratulations to the mine sweeping wife upon having captured a Baby Mine.

BEASTS ROYAL.

III.

Duke William's Falcon. A.D. 1065.

THE CAVE-DWELLERS.

"If you please, ma'am, that funny-looking gentleman with the