the organization
likely to appreciate the most gallant of his deeds has not yet been
formed--the S.P.G.P., or Society for the Preservation of Government
Property.

Steggles was once riding behind me down a valley liberally dimpled with
shell-holes, further dimples being in process of formation as we rode. I
was returning from an O Pip, or Observation Post, and Steggles was carrying
a pair of my boots with a rolled puttee stuffed into each. Suddenly I was
aware that he had wheeled his horse about, and was trotting back towards
the most dimply area of the valley. Out of regard for his family, I
cantered after him. He broke into a gallop. When, after a thrilling ride, I
caught him and had a little talk amongst the dimples, it appeared that he
had dropped one of the puttees, and wished to return and look for it. This
incident will, I think, demonstrate the exceptional character of the man,
who did not appear to regard himself as a hero, or to pose as a desperate
_farceur_, or to aspire to the post of Q.M.S., though, incredible as it may
seem, the puttee in question was of the variety G.S.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Orderly Officer_. "WHY DON'T YOU CHALLENGE ME?"

_Latest called-up Recruit_. "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE COMING."

_Orderly Officer_. "WHAT DID THE CORPORAL SAY WHEN HE POSTED YOU?"

_Recruit_. "I WOULDN'T LIKE TO REPEAT IT TO AN OFFICER, SIR."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks_.)

To those who would learn what soldiering is like in the armies of
democratic France I would heartily commend two books recently published by
Messrs. ALLEN AND UNWIN, _Battles and Bivouacs_, by JACQUES ROUJON, and
_The Diary of a French Private_, by GASTON RIOU. M. ROUJON, infantryman of
the line, was in private life a journalist on _Le Figaro_; M. RIOU, Red
Cross orderly, a liberal lay-theologian and writer of European reputation.
The former's transliterator ("Munitions are distributed around," writes he
undismayed; and has also discovered a territory known as "Oriental
Prussia") obtrudes a little between author and reader. M. RIOU fares
better; but both contrive to give a really vivid impression of the horrors
and anxieties of the early days of the War before the tide turned at the
Marne, of the flying rumours so far from the actual truth, of the fine
spirit of _camaraderie_ in common danger, of the intimate relations between