ES,--Let us talk _Haute Finance_. In other words, let us
indulge in that good old Anglo-Saxon pastime of blackguarding COX AND CO.
It will remind us of the piping days of war. There is too much peace about,
and the gentle and ever-forgiving COX AND CO. expect their customers to be
men of force and character, showing temper from time to time. Everybody
else may be demobilised; I remain a soldier, and as such I have my special
bank. Ah, me! the battles in Charing Cross are not the easy things they
used to be. No longer, as of old, I come fresh to the attack against a mere
underling, worn down by the assaults of wave after wave of brother-officers
attacking, before me. I enter the Territorial Department alone and am taken
on by a master-hand, supported and flanked by a number of unoccupied
subordinates. About the Spring of 1925, when I expect to be the only "T"
left, I anticipate the decisive moment when I shall cross swords or swop
bombs with Sir COX himself. Having bravely encountered "AND CO." these many
years, I shall not be daunted by that gilded knight.

The war having once put me in possession of my COX AND CO., I had very
frequent recourse to them when in need of such solace as only money can
bring. The time arrived when I applied in vain; the money had disappeared.
Though I had no reason to suspect COX AND CO. of being dishonest I noticed
a tone of assuredness and self-complacency in their letters strangely
similar to that in my own, and I _knew_ that I was being dishonest, so I
demanded to see my pass-book. It was a horrid sight, and it gave me
seriously to think. How came it that the side of the book which showed my
takings was so clear and easily to be understood, but the side which showed
their takings wrapt in mystery and hieroglyphics such as not even the
world's leading financiers and mathematicians could hope to unravel? My
subaltern, being consulted, agreed with me; I would have had him carpeted
by the C.O. at once if he hadn't.

I stepped round to COX AND CO. and had it out with them verbally. After a
discussion lasting half-an-hour, it was shown that I had been credited with
a week's pay to which I wasn't entitled and that a month's income-tax, to
which a grasping Government _was_ entitled, had not been deducted. I left
the building ninety-three shillings worse off than I entered it.

I gave COX AND CO. six months to go wrong in, and then called for that
pass-book again. My eye fell upon a paying and de