“What are you going to do now?” I asked.  “Back to the old firm?”

“No,” said Bilsden gravely; “when a man has acquired the power of leading men he’s thrown away in an accountant’s office, especially as the junior member of the staff.  I see no prospect in England.  I have offered to take charge of large departments of English firms, and be responsible for entire supervision, but they fail to recognise what the capacity for leadership gained in the army will do.  I’m off to Ceylon—­tea-planting.  Just to control big gangs of coolies and see that they work.  It will be child’s play for me.  Lovely climate; elephants.  An absolutely ideal job.”

It seemed to me on that foggy frosty day, that to lie in a hammock in the shade, with the temperature about ninety, watching coolies work, would be the perfect form of labour.

I congratulated Bilsden on having found his metier.

Half-an-hour later I met Parkinson, another second-loot who had just shed his pip.

“Well, what are you going to do now?” I asked.

“I’m a bit dubious,” he said.

“Try tea-planting in Ceylon,” I suggested.  “Elephants, spicy breezes, swing in a hammock all day watching coolies.  My dear boy, were I twenty years younger I should be inquiring about a berth on the next steamer.”

“Ah,” said Parkinson, “of course Ceylon’s all right, and I’ve a lot of pals going out there; but what about rubber-planting in the Malay Peninsula?  They’ve got tigers there.  That’s rather a pull.”

I admitted the attraction of tigers to certain tastes, but not to mine.  In my case the pull, I thought, might be on the tiger’s side.

Since these interviews I have been going the rounds of my military acquaintances and I find a general feeling in favour of Ceylon or the Malay Peninsula.

Of course it’s an excellent thing that they should take up the white man’s burden and make the coolies work, only I’m in dread lest the overcrowding we suffer from in England may be extended to the Orient.  Will there be enough plantations, coolies and big game to go round amongst our subalterns?

I can see the Government introducing several Bills—­

(1) For the extension of the Isle of Ceylon;

(2) For the lengthening of the Malay Peninsula;

(3) For the importation of five million coolies, estimated at the rate of five hundred coolies each, to give employment to ten thousand second-loots;

(4) For the importation of elephants, tigers, lions, buffalo, hippopotami, giraffes and capercailzie.

* * * * *

AT PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE.

[Mr. GEOFFREY DAWSON has resigned the Editorship of The Times, owing to a disagreement with Lord NORTHCLIFFE over matters of policy, and has been succeeded by Mr. H. WICKHAM STEED, formerly foreign editor.]

  “Once more upon the waters!  Yet once more! 
  And the waves bound beneath me as a Steed
  That knows his master.”