n being paid to the changes of the Moon.

* * * * *

Society is always on the look-out for some new distraction from the
tedium of War. The latest vogue with smart people is to get up little
air-raid parties for the Tube, to be followed by auction or a small
boy-and-girl dance. Sections of tunnel or platform can be engaged
beforehand by arrangement with the Constabulary.

* * * * *

I hear that my friend, ARTHUR BOURCHIER, continues to draw crowds to
the Oxford. I was dining the other day with a young and brilliant
officer, who has seen two months' active service in the A.S.C. and
won golden opinions at the Base, and he assured me that there is no
"Better 'Ole" than the Oxford during an air-raid.

* * * * *

Now that London is part of the Front, with a barrage of its own, one
has to be careful to censor one's correspondence. It is advisable not
to mention your actual address, but just to write "Somewhere in the
West-End. B.S.F." (British Sedentary Force).

* * * * *

The Winter season has begun exceptionally early. Last Sunday at Church
Parade I saw Lady "Nibs" Tattenham, looking the very image of her
latest photograph in _The Prattler_, where she appears with her pet
Pekie over the legend, "Deeply interested in War-work."

* * * * *

A gallant Contemptible has been complaining to me that the Press shows
no sense of proportion in the space that it allots to air-raids. Our
casualties from that source, he said, are never one tenth as heavy as
those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports "Everything quiet on the
Western Front." I naturally disagreed with his attitude. Nothing, I
told him, is more likely to discourage the Hun than to see column
after column in our papers proving that these visitations leave us
totally unmoved. Besides it must be very comforting to our troops
in the trenches to learn in detail how their dear ones at home are
sharing the perils of the other fronts. In any case nobody who knows
our Press would doubt the purity of their motive in reporting as many
air-raid horrors as the Censor permits.

* * * * *

_A propos_ of the Patriotic Press, no praise can be too high for some
of our society weeklies. They have set their faces like flint against
any serious reference to the War. When I see them going impertur