you came along
the beach dressed like that, I'd take a shot at you, just on the chance,
anyway."

"And, quite right, too!" said Ford.

He was wondering when the invasion did come whether he would stick at
his post in London and dutifully forward the news to his paper, or play
truant and as a war correspondent watch the news in the making. So the
words of Mr. Clarkson's assistant did not sink in. But a few weeks later
young Major Bellew recalled them. Bellew was giving a dinner on the
terrace of the Savoy Restaurant. His guests were his nephew, young
Herbert, who was only five years younger than his uncle, and Herbert's
friend Birrell, an Irishman, both in their third term at the university.
After five years' service in India, Bellew had spent the last "Eights"
week at Oxford, and was complaining bitterly that since his day the
undergraduate had deteriorated. He had found him serious, given to
study, far too well behaved. Instead of Jorrocks, he read Galsworthy;
instead of "wines" he found pleasure in debating clubs where he
discussed socialism. Ragging, practical jokes, ingenious hoaxes,
that once were wont to set England in a roar, were a lost art. His
undergraduate guests combated these charges fiercely. His criticisms
they declared unjust and without intelligence.

"You're talking rot!" said his dutiful nephew. "Take Phil here, for
example. I've roomed with him three years and I can testify that he has
never opened a book. He never heard of Galsworthy until you spoke of
him. And you can see for yourself his table manners are quite as bad as
yours!"

"Worse!" assented Birrell loyally.

"And as for ragging! What rags, in your day, were as good as ours;
as the Carrie Nation rag, for instance, when five hundred people sat
through a temperance lecture and never guessed they were listening to a
man from Balliol?"

"And the Abyssinian Ambassador rag!" cried Herbert. "What price that?
When the DREADNOUGHT manned the yards for him and gave him seventeen
guns. That was an Oxford rag, and carried through by Oxford men. The
country hasn't stopped laughing yet. You give us a rag!" challenged
Herbert. "Make it as hard as you like; something risky, something that
will make the country sit up, something that will send us all to jail,
and Phil and I will put it through whether it takes one man or a dozen.
Go on," he persisted, "And I bet we can get fifty volunteers right here
in town and all of them undergraduates."

"Give