y making himself ridiculous.

I was staying in Canterbury with Norah for the weekend, and I heard all
about it. He did seem to have been rather funny. He had begun with a
scheme for taking out a Red Cross Motor Field Ambulance which he proposed
to command in person. He had offered himself with his convoy first to the
War Office, then to the Admiralty, then to the War Office again, and the
War Office and the Admiralty kicked him out. Then he had gone round to
each of the Red Cross Societies in turn, the American included. And they
had all got their own schemes for Motor Field Ambulances, and didn't want
his. What they _did_ want was his subscriptions and his powerful pen to
support their schemes. And Jevons had said, "Damn my powerful pen!" to
every one of them. As for subscriptions, he subscribed enormously to his
own Motor Ambulance Corps. He had actually raised his unit, found his
volunteers, his surgeons, his chauffeurs and his stretcher-bearers, he
had bought and equipped a Motor Ambulance car, the one he had proposed to
go with himself. And they took his subscriptions and his Ambulance Car
and his volunteers; but they wouldn't take him; no, not at any price.
They put one of his surgeons at the head of the thing instead of him and
sent it out without him, and Jimmy had to see it go. But when they
proposed that Jimmy should use his powerful pen to maintain it in the
field, he swore that he would use it to expose the whole system. And when
he found that the responsibility for rejecting his services rested with
the War Office, he went down to the War Office and complained, and to the
Admiralty and complained, and to the Home Office and complained. After
that he seems to have visited all the Embassies in turn--the American,
the French, the Belgian, and I suppose the Russian and the Japanese.

When I asked the Thesigers what he was doing now they said they didn't
know. They hadn't heard of him and his activities for quite a fortnight,
and they didn't bother about him. They were too much wrapped up in
Bertie and in Reggie, even if they hadn't been too busy--every one of
them up to their necks in work for the Army or the hospitals. They
admitted that he had sent them large subscriptions.

It seemed to me, as far as I could make out, that Viola hadn't seen or
heard of him since she had left Amershott. She was too busy and too much
wrapped in Reggie to bother about him either; at least, it looked like
it. She seems to have