I speak as one who ought to know;
  Myself I tried a trick or so
  In U.S.A. and had to go,
    Looking absurdly silly;
  And now against us, big with fate,
  That Hemisphere has thrown its weight,
  Both North and South (though up to date
    We haven’t heard from Chili).

  Laughter we’ve earned—­a noble shame! 
  Built to achieve a higher aim,
  We honest Huns can’t play the game
    Of shifty propaganders;
  Henceforth we’d better all get back
  On to the straight and righteous track
  And help our Hindenburg to hack
    (If not too late) through Flanders.

  O.S.

* * * * *

    “Red heels were much in evidence, both Lady D——­ and Lady C——­
    affected them, and they were to be seen in other unexpected
    places.”—­Observer.

Certainly their use as ornaments in the small of the back surprised us a good deal.

* * * * *

The carp at Miramel.

    [In the following article all actual names, personal, geographical
    and regimental, have been duly camouflaged.]

The carp that live in the moat of the Chateau de Miramel (in the zone of the armies in France) are of an age and ugliness incredible and of a superlative cynicism.  One of them—­local tradition pointed to a one-eyed old reprobate with a yellow face—­is the richer these hundred years past by an English peeress’s diamond ring.

From the bottom of the moat one world-war is like another, and none of them very different from peace.  It is but a row of grinning red healthy faces over the coping and a shower of bread and biscuit.

When the nightmare of Bonaparte was ended in the Autumn of 1815, the 22nd K.R.  Lancers, commanded by an English peer, billeted themselves in and around the Chateau de Miramel.  The English peer, finding time hang heavy on his hands, or my lady’s letters proving insistent, sent for her to come out to him at Miramel.  You could do that sort of homely thing in 1815.

So my lady comes to Miramel, and the very first day, as she leans out of window in the round tower, mishandles her diamond ring (gift of my lord) and drops it into the moat.  Her host, the good Comte de Miramel, dredged and drained, but no trace of the diamond ring was ever found.  But old Cyclops, the carp, grinned horribly.

In due course my lord and lady went home to the Isle of Fogs, and thence they sent their portraits to their host as a souvenir of their stay.  Here indeed the portraits still hang, very graceful in the style of the period.  And to the appreciative visitor Madame de Miramel (of to-day) shows a missive of thanks, written in indifferent bad French, in which my lady refers sorrowfully to “ma bague diamantee.”

* * * * *

Once again the 22nd K.R.  Lancers are billeted in Miramel.  The other day I noticed on a worn stone pillar at the great door the following half-obliterated words:—­