again slowly. He reads the first five letters as s-w-r-t-g and assumes this time that I am offering him a nice town in Poland. It is five minutes before we get the mortgage properly established, and by then James is utterly disgusted.

He is now going to send a message to me. There is nothing half-hearted about James when he has his khaki shirt on.

"Why the devil don't you send up those guns?" he signals.

General James is hard pressed. The enemy is advancing in echelon against his left wing; cavalry beat themselves against the hollow square on his right; his centre has formed platoon after platoon unavailingly. Still the enemy comes on. Where the devil are those guns?

I signalled back:

"Sorry, but B Company is using the bullet."

It was a blow to James. Reluctantly he came to his decision.

"Must fall back," he said, and he caught a flag between his legs and did so....

Well, there you have us signalling. To show you us skirmishing I cannot do better than describe the fierce engagement between A and C Companies, which resulted in the entire annihilation of A. But perhaps that would not be fair. I am a prejudiced recorder; let one of A Company speak.

He was annoyed.

"We worked round their flank," he said, "and we'd got quite close up to them under cover of a wood when we came on one of them smoking a pipe. He said he was an outpost, and that he'd decimated us all long ago."

"What did you do?" asked his friend.

"We scragged him."

Personally I had a safer position among the supports. A decimated enemy in the first flush of annoyance can be dangerous. I merely lay in a ditch and counted ants.... But I was very glad to hear we'd won.

Rifle exercises go on apace. We have a curious collection of weapons ("weapons of precision" as they are called by those who have never seen my targets), an order for six hundred of one family having fallen through, owing to a clerical error. "We can offer you 600 rifles, 1900 pattern," the firm wrote; but an inspection of them showed that the "6" and the "9" had got mixed up.

But even with more modern weapons than these we are not very formidable as yet, and for some weeks we must rely on other methods of striking terror into the hearts of the enemy. Luckily we are acquiring an excellent substitute for lead. As an example of "frightfulness" nothing can exceed the appearance of one of our really mixed platoons lying on its backs and waving its legs in the air. This is one of the Swedish drill movements ... and, as I think I have mentioned before, we are all ages and shapes....

Let me conclude with a little story to show the dangers to which we are subject and the fearlessness with which we face them. I cite the case of Reginald Arbuthnot Wilkins.

R. A. Wilkins is just as keen as they make them, and it is his great sorrow that, being in an important Government office, he is not allowed to enlist. For my liking he is too smart; when he does a "right-turn" he does it with a jerk that you can almost hear. The click of the heels is all very well, but Reginald Arbuthnot makes his neck click too. An "eyes-right" nearly takes his head off.

A dozen of them, including Reginald, were being taught saluting the other day. There was an imaginary Field-Marshal or somebody on the left, and they were told to turn the head smartly to the left, at the same time bringing the right hand up to the salute.... "Sa-lute!" Reginald Arbuthnot Wilkins whizzed his head round to the left, but accidentally brought the wrong hand up. There was a crash as his left thumb met his left eye-ball, and Reginald was in hospital for a week.

The remarkable thing is that the other eleven, quite undismayed, went on practising the salute. That gives you some idea of our spirit.

A. A. M.

STRATEGIC DISEASE.

[Some of the German military authorities having explained that their retreat from Paris was due to the spread of cholera in that city, we may perhaps expect to have something like the following further "explanations" elsewhere.]

Le mot juste.

"Reports of military movements behind the Germans' front in Belgium are contradictory and too bragmentary to be worth much."—Western Mail.

"Mr. Churchill: Six, nine, twelve months hence you will begin to see results that will spell the domm of Germany."—Daily Mail.

We could spell it better than that in three months.

"The smallness of the members present was due in large measure to the war."—Edinburgh Evening Despatch.

The shortage of food, due to the German blockade, is at last making itself felt.—[Wireless from Berlin.]

THE HISTORY OF A PAIR OF MITTENS.

"Waal, it's this way. We Amurricans don't take no sides—we're ab-so-lootly nootral. We don' give a row o' beans which of you knocks the Kaiser out."

SAFEGUARDS.

It was the special terms to Special Constables that tempted me—and I fell.

I don't just remember how many times I fell, but it was pretty nearly as often as the "Professor" of the wily art took hold of me. Before the first lesson was over, falling became more than a mere pastime with me, it grew into a serious occupation.

So I left the jiu-jitsu school at the end of the second lesson with a nodding acquaintance with some very pretty holds and a very firm determination to practise them on Alfred when he got back to the office next day from Birmingham.

I suppose I ought to have persevered with my lessons a little longer, but I was losing my self-respect, and felt that nothing would help me to gain it better than to cause somebody else to do the falling for a bit.

Alfred is six-foot-two, but a trifle weedy-looking, and so good-tempered that I knew he wouldn't resent being practised on.

As he came in I advanced with outstretched hand to meet him.

"How goes it?" he said cheerily, holding out his hand.