h all my lines.

The fellow doesn't keep the rules;
Experts (I'm one myself) advise
That in trench-warfare even fools
Cannot be taken by surprise;
It isn't done; and yet he came
With never a previous "Are you there?"
And caught me--this is not the game--
Bending my thoughtful gaze elsewhere.

_Later_.--My route is toward the rear.
Where I shall stand and stop the rot
Lord only knows; and now I hear
Your forward pace is none too hot;
Indeed, with BYNG upon the burst,
If at this rate I make for home,
I doubt not who will get there first,
I to the Rhine, or you to Rome.

O.S.

* * * * *

THE LITERARY ADVISER.

No, he does not appear in the _Gazette_. War establishments know him
not and his appointment throws no additional labour upon the staff of
Messrs. COX AND CO. Unofficially he is known as O.C. Split Infinitives.
His duties are to see that the standard of literary excellence, which
makes the correspondence of the Corps a pleasure to receive, is
maintained at the high level set by the Corps Commander himself. Indeed
the velvety quality of our prose is the envy of all other formations.

Apart from duties wholly literary, he is also O.C. Code Names. The
stock-in-trade for this skilled labour is an H.B. pencil and a Webster
Dictionary. The routine is simplicity itself. As soon as anybody informs
him of a new arrival in the area he fishes out the dictionary, plays
Tit-Tat-Toe with the H.B., writes out the word that it lands upon at the
end of his rhyme, and, hey presto! there is another day's work done.

But one day, for the sake of greater secrecy, it became necessary to
rename all the units of the area, and the Literary Adviser suddenly
found himself put to it to provide about three hundred new Code Names at
once. Heroically he set to work with his dictionary, his H.B. pencil,
and his little rhyme. For two days the Resplendent Ones in the General
Staff Office bore patiently with the muttering madman in the corner.
For two days he fluttered the leaves of his dictionary and
whispered hoarsely to himself, "Tit-tat-toe, my-first-go,
three-jolly-nigger-boys-all-in-a-_row_," picking out word after word
with unerring accuracy until the dictionary was a waste of punctures and
three generations of H.B.'s had passed away. Before the second day was
out the jingle had done its dreadful work. It was as much as the clerks
could do to avoid keeping step with