ry we give ourselves over entirely to
warlike pursuits. Some days we slope arms by numbers; and other days we
clean dixies and indent for new boots. Night by night we guard our
approaches and prod the tyres of oncoming motors with fixed bayonets.
Every morning the man who held up General FRENCH tells us about it with
bated breath over our bated breakfasts. It is one of the finest
traditions of the corps that General FRENCH is held up by us every
night. We have our own sentries' word for it. This is especially
interesting in view of the persistent reports that he is in a totally
different part of France. As he gives a different name every night and
varies considerably in appearance we feel that there must be something
behind it all.

Thompson, who is no end of a fire-eater and wants to be invalided home
with a bullet in his left shoulder--he is engaged--has invented a scheme
for getting to the front by sheer initiative. Our officers have quite a
pedantic veneration for orders, field-marshals and other obsolete pink
apron-strings. We are thus thrown back on our sergeants, a fine body of
men whose one weakness is an enthusiasm for chocolate. Acting on this
knowledge certain tactful and public-spirited privates in our midst will
present the sergeants with two sticks of chocolate per sergeant on the
understanding that they thereafter form the battalion into fours and
march them circumstantially to the trenches. There are, by all accounts,
such supplies of these that a few here and there are bound to be empty.
Having occupied these we will all expose our left shoulders, and, having
gleaned a whole shrubbery of laurels, return to Divisional H.-Q. The
sergeants, such as survive, will then be court-martialled and shot at
dawn, while the rest of the regiment will be honourably exiled to
England in glorious disgrace. All that remains is for Thompson to
approach the sergeants with chocolate.

* * * * *

We notice a stray poster which advertises the thrilling romance, _I Hid
my Love_. Is the idea that he should elude conscription? or simply
Zeppelins?

* * * * *

Illustration: THE INNOCENT.

CROWN PRINCE. "THIS OUGHT TO MAKE FATHER LAUGH!"

[In an alleged interview the CROWN PRINCE is reported to have said, "As
to being a war agitator, I am truly sorry that people don't know me
better. There is no 'War Party' in Germany now--nor has there ever
been."]

*