"Well, I'll be darned--you haven't changed a bit!" was all the French
they could remember.

----
HIS IS NOT A HAPPY LOT
SAYS ARMY POSTAL CLERK
----
Works Eighteen Hours a Day and Has To Be Both
a Directory of the A. E. F. and a
Sherlock Holmes.
----

"Private Wolfe Tone Moriarity, Fighting
Umpth, France."

The Army Postal Service clerk surveyed the battered envelope on the desk
before him, pushed his worn Stetson back from a forehead the wrinkles in
which resembled a much fought-over trench system, adjusted his glasses
to his weary eyes, spat, and remarked:

"Easy! The 'Fighting Umpth' was changed over into the Steenhundred and
Umpty-umpth, wasn't it? The last that was heard from them they were at
Blankville-sur-Bum. Now they've moved to Bingville-le-somethingorother.
Clerk! Shove this in Box 4-11-44!"

"Lieutenant Brown, care American
Army, somewhere in France."

Again the Postal Service man, once-overed the envelope, purplish in hue,
went through the motions of pushing back his hat, expectorated, and
began:

Purple Paper a Clue.

"That's Lieutenant James Brown, I reckon. There's a lot of that name in
the Medical Department, but hell! He's married. Nobody writes to him on
purple paper. Then there's another one in the One Thousand, Nine-Hundred
and Seventeenth Motor-Ammunition-Ration-Revictualling-Woodchopping
Battalion. His'n allus writes to him on that kind of paper. I guess
that's him, all right. Hey, feller, shove this in 88966543, will-ya?
Thanks!"

From the rear of a line of scrapping, frantic mail orderlies, each one
trying to corner all the packages marked "Tobacco" and "Chocolate" for
his particular outfit, the reporter, by standing on a box marked
"Fragile--This Side Up," was able to see the scene depicted above, and
to hear, above the din, the Postal Clerk's momentous decisions.

Nothing like that had ever come into his ken before. He had seen Col.
Roosevelt at work in his office, talking into two telephones, dictating
to four stenographers, and writing a letter with each hand
simultaneously. He had watched the President of the United States
dispose of four Senators, eight Representatives, three Governors of
States, seven Indian tribal chiefs and the G