hat is unnecessary now. I think that by this time I have
made it clear just how many stars I possess.

One on the right shoulder. So:

*

And one on the left shoulder. So:

*

That is all.

THE JOKE: A TRAGEDY

CHAPTER I

The Joke was born one October day in the trench called Mechanics, not so
far from Loos. We had just come back into the line after six days in
reserve, and, the afternoon being quiet, I was writing my daily letter to
Celia. I was telling her about our cat, imported into our dug-out in the
hope that it would keep the rats down, when suddenly the Joke came. I was
so surprised by it that I added in brackets, "This is quite my own. I've
only just thought of it." Later on the Post-Corporal came, and the Joke
started on its way to England.

CHAPTER II

Chapter II finds me some months later at home again.

"Do you remember that joke about the rats in one of your letters?" said
Celia one evening.

"Yes. You never told me if you liked it."

"I simply loved it. You aren't going to waste it, are you?"

"If you simply loved it, it wasn't wasted."

"But I want everybody else--Couldn't you use it in the Revue?"

I was supposed to be writing a Revue at this time for a certain
impresario. I wasn't getting on very fast, because whenever I suggested a
scene to him, he either said, "Oh, that's been done," which killed it, or
else he said, "Oh, but that's never been done," which killed it even more
completely.

"Good idea," I said to Celia. "We'll have a Trench Scene."

I suggested it to the impresario when next I saw him.

"Oh, that's been done," he said.

"Mine will be quite different from anybody else's," I said firmly.

He brightened up a little.

"All right, try it," he said.

I seemed to have discovered the secret of successful revue-writing.

The Trench Scene was written. It was written round the Joke, whose bright
beams, like a perfect jewel in a perfect setting--However, I said all
that to Celia at the time. She was just going to have said it herself,
she told me.

So far, so good. But a month later the Revue collapsed. The impresario
and I agreed upon many things--as, for instance, that the War would be a
long one, and that Hindenburg was no fool--but there were two points upon
which we could never quite agree: (1) What was funny, and (2) which of us
was writing the Revue. So, with mutual expressions of goodwill, and hopes
that one day we might write a tragedy togethe