class by itself. We demanded an investigator, somebody with wide mine-sweeping experience preferred.

About 2 A.M. on our first day in, a figure loomed up through a snow-storm from the back of the central trench and asked forlornly if there might be any mines hereabouts. We admitted there might be, or again there might not. He questioned us precisely where it was suspected, and we told him "underneath." He scratched his head and announced that he was sent to look for it. His qualifications consisted apparently in his having coal-mined. But he seemed confident of detecting the quicker combustion sort, until he asked for necessary impedimenta. It seems that no good collier can detect an H.E. or any sort of mine without a pail of water, and a hole about 2,000 feet deep, and a pulley, and a rope ladder and a bratting-slat.

It's true we had some good holes in parts of the trench, where you probably go down 2,000 feet if you step off the footboards, and the rest of the stuff we might have contrived to improvise. But for the moment we had somehow run clean out of bratting-slats.

So we had to return the poor fellow with a request that all experts should be completed with bratting-slats before being sent to the front line. This request only produced the senseless interrogation, "What is a bratting-slat?" to which we have not yet bothered to reply. In the meantime if we are really sitting on a mine it seems quite a tame one. It hasn't as much as barked yet.

Just in our bit we aren't very well off for dug-outs; it isn't really what you'd call a representative sector from any point of view. But during a blizzard the other night a messenger who had mislaid himself took us for a serious trench. He made his way along, looking to right and left for some seat of authority until he came to a hole in the parados, two feet by one, where some fortunate fellow had ejected an ammunition box and was attempting to boil water on a night-light. The messenger bent low and asked huskily—

"Is this 'ere comp'ny edquarters?"

The water-boiler looked up. "No," he replied, "it ain't. It's G.H.Q., but Duggie 'Aig ain't at 'ome to no one this evenin'."

First Tommy. "The C.O.'s recommended you for a V.C"

Second Tommy (half asleep and thinking of C.B.). "Oh lumme! What 'ave I done now?"

"GERMANS' TERRIBLE LOSSES.

WHOLE CORPS WIPED OUT.

By Lord Northcliffe."

Belfast News Letter.

Yet, with commendable modesty, his lordship said nothing about this in his recent despatch.

The Daily News reports the case of a conscientious objector at York who said he could not take life—he "would not even eat an egg." We ourselves have conscientious objections to that sort of egg.

OFFICERS' INSTRUCTION CLASS.

First Boy. "I say, your dad seems to be getting it pretty hot."

Second Boy. "Well, you see, this is his first war."

TO THE KING OF SPAIN.

Your Majesty, There is a little village in England nestling among wooded hills. It has sent forth its bravest and best from cottage and farm and manor-house to fight for truth and liberty and justice. The news of grievous wounds and still more grievous deaths, of men missing and captured, comes often to that quiet hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and they always end like this:—

"And God bless Father and Mother and Nurse, and send Father back soon from his howwid prison in Germany. And God bless 'specially the dear King of Spain, who found out about Father. Amen."

The kings of the earth have many priceless possessions; they are able to confer upon each other various glittering orders of merit and distinction; but we doubt if any one of them has a dearer possession or a more genuine order of merit than this simple prayer of faith and gratitude offered at sunrise and at sunset on behalf of Your Majesty by the bedside of a little English child.

THE OLD SOLDIER.

By a "Temporary" Sub.

A QUESTION OF THE NUDE.

They scrambled into the carriage in a tremendous hurry, all talking at once at the tops of their voices, all very excited and very dirty. They had mud on their boots which had evidently come from France, and their overcoats had that rumpled appearance which distinguishes overcoats from the Front from those merely in training.

There seemed to be about ten of them as they got into the train, but when they had deposited various objects on the rack, such as rifles, haversacks, and kit-bags like partially deflated airships, the number resolved itself into three.

The compartment already contained—besides myself—a naval warrant officer, reading Freckles with a sentimental expression, and a large leading seaman with hands like small hams and a peaceful