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For our sailors.

The current week is “Navy Week,” and Mr. Punch begs to urge his kind friends to take their part in the great organised effort to raise a large sum for the benefit of our sailors and their families—­R.N., R.N.R., R.N.V.R., trawlers and mine-sweepers.  The nation owes them all a debt that can never be paid.  The fund is to be administered on the lines of King Edward’s Hospital Fund.  An All-American matinee will be given in this good cause at the Victoria Palace on Thursday, July 26th, and Trelawny of the Wells (with Miss Irene vanbrugh) at the New Theatre on Friday.  Gifts for the fund may be addressed to Commodore Sir Richard Williams-Bulkeley, Bt., at the offices of “Navy Week,” 5, Green Street, Leicester Square, W.C. 2.

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[Illustration:  The scrapper scrapped.]

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[Illustration:  Sergeant (to cadet).  “SIT BACK, SIR!  SIT BACK!  THINK WOT A BLINKIN’ FOOL YOU’D LOOK IF ’IS ’EAD WAS TO COME ORF!”]

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THE WATCH DOGS.

LXIII.

My dear Charles,—­I never meant to give myself away; I meant to go on talking about the old War till the end, just as if I was taking a leading part in it, so that you should have still believed I was doing the bull-dog business with the best of them.  But no, let me be honest and tell you that I have practically ceased to be a dog.  The only painful connection I can boast of recently with the War is that, having cause to travel from place to place in this country, I was unhappy enough to strike six meatless days in succession, which gave me to think that even embusquing in France has its drawbacks.  On the seventh day I was accused, by good people who know not Thomas, of being (1) a Russian, (2) an American, (3) a Belgian, and (4) an Irishman, which made me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet.  And I’ve got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn’t think I’m a hero any longer, and little James is being taught to blush and look away and start another subject when anybody says “Dad-dad,” and (if you can believe this) I’ve just been made to pay a franc-and-a-half for a tin of bully beef.