o hospitals."--_Daily Mail._

The two extra ones, it is understood, came from HINDENBURG'S "strategic
reserve."

* * * * *

"It is expected that an official announcement will shortly be made of a
scheme which will put practically the whole of the topmaking industry
of Bradford at the disposal of the Government."--_Daily Telegraph._

That ought to make things hum.

* * * * *

"Napoleon was desolated were he left in the same room with a cat ...
but he was not in the least afraid of being alone in the same room with
Anne of Austria, whose claws were of a far more formidable capacity."--
_West Australian._

NAPOLEON'S intrepidity may have been due to his knowledge that ANNE of
Austria died about a century before he was born.

* * * * *

[Illustration: "MY POOR REGINALD IS IN 'ORSPITAL WITH RHEUMATICS IN HIS
LEGS. THE SCOTCH COSTUME, YOU KNOW."]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER MEDALS."

_Mrs. Dowey_ (actually a virgin spinster), felt herself out of it because
she had no son at the Front to talk about. I gathered that it was not so
much a case of unsatisfied yearning for motherhood, as that she wanted to
hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches.
So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous _marraine_ towards a
certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of
having received letters from her son.

Suddenly she is confronted with this _Private Dowey_, home on leave--a
lonely soldier with no family ties. The joy that she had taken in her
imagined sense of proprietorship is dashed by fear of exposure and of
possible resentment on his part. At first he treats her intrusion almost
brutally, but is soon mollified by the offer of food and other hospitality;
and by the time his leave is up he has developed an almost filial regard
for her. Their parting is as the parting of a tender-hearted mother and a
rather unemotional son. The pathos of this scene, though designed and
interpreted with a very sensitive restraint, was comparatively obvious--a
commonplace, indeed, of these heart-rending days. There was a far more
subtle and original note of pathos in the contrast between the brusque
humour of the man's casual acceptance of the situation and the timorous,
adoring, dog-like devotion of the w