ther in the Air Force, to cancel his winter order with Breezes, the
naval tailors, and we shall all go below and pack our trunks and get ready
to hand the ship over to Spooner. If the Navy of the future must be under
water there is no particular reason why we should be there too.

* * * * *

[Illustration: MANNERS AND MODES.

FASHIONABLE METEOROLOGY FOR MICHAELMAS. BRITISH ISLES: TEMPERATURE, WARM TO
CHILLY (ACCORDING TO TASTE).]

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Jarvey._ "YE'RE ON THE WRONG SIDE AV YERE ROAD, MICK."

_Mick._ "SURE THE COUNTRY'S OUR OWN NOW AND WE CAN DHRIVE WHERE WE LIKE."]

* * * * *

THE CONSPIRATORS.

1.

My Dear Charles,--You continue to ask me what I am doing, and why, and when
I am going to sign the Peace, like everyone else, and return to honest
work. The answer is in the negative. Though I am very fond of peace, I
don't like work. And, as for being honest, I tend rather to politics. Have
I never told you that I take a leading part on the Continent in the great
Class War now raging? And, by the way, has anyone let you know that it is
only a matter of time before the present order of society is closed down,
the rule of the proletariat established and people like Charles set on to
clean the streets or ruthlessly eliminated?

LENIN began to worry about you as long ago as 1915, and you know what
happens to people when LENIN really starts to worry about them. He wasn't
satisfied that enough violent interest was being taken in you; the mere
Socialists he regarded as far too moderate and genteel. As for their First
and their Second International--he wanted something thoroughgoing,
something with a bit of ginger to it. So at the Zimmerwald Congress on the
5th September of that year all the out-and-outs unanimously declared war to
the knife agin the Government, whatever and wherever the Government might
be. How many long and weary years have you waited, Charles, to be told what
Zimmerwaldianism might be--a religious tendency, a political aspiration, a
valvular disease of the appendix or something to do with motor-cars? Ah,
but that is as nothing to the secrets I am going to let you into, to force
you into, before I have done with you.

It was not until well into 1918 that I myself began to worry about LENIN.
He had left Switzerland by that time, having got tired of the jodelling
Swiss and their infernally