But, since the War, he hasn’t struck
  Or downed his tools—­I mean his truck—­
  And plays the game with patient pluck
  Like a sturdy Briton.

  He’s often old and far from strong,
  But still he doesn’t “make a song”
  About his lot, but jogs along
  Steadily and bravely.

  He doesn’t greet with surly frowns
  Or naughty adjectives and nouns
  A tip of just a brace of “browns”
  Where he once got sixpence.

  But better far than any meed
  Of praise embodied in this screed
  Is ERIC GEDDES’ boast that he’d
  Been a railway porter.

* * * * *

THE TOWER THAT PASSED IN THE NIGHT.

It was in the beginning of things, when the gunners of the new army were very new indeed, and the 0000th Battery had just taken up its first position on the Western Front.  As soon as the guns were satisfactorily placed the O.C. began a careful survey of the enemy positions.  Slowly he ran his field-glasses over the seemingly peaceful landscape, and the first thing he noticed was a small, deserted, half-ruined tower with ivy hanging in dark masses down its sides.

“We must have that removed at once,” he said to the Captain.  “It’s the very place for an observation post.  Probably one of their best.  How long do you think it will take you to get it down?”

“Oh, we ought to do it in an hour,” was the confident reply.

But the hour passed and the tower remained just as peaceful, just as suitable for an O.P. as ever.  The only change was that many other features of the adjacent landscape had been resolved into their component parts.

The battery was disappointed, but not unduly so.  They knew what was the matter; a couple of hours’ work should give them the range, and then—­

But, when evening came and the tower still stood untouched, 0000th Battery began to be worried indeed.  A little more of this and they might as well blow themselves up.  They would be disgraced, a laughing-stock to the whole Front.  After hopeless arguments and bitter recriminations they turned in with the intention of beginning again bright and early in one last stupendous effort.

Great and shattering was their surprise when the dawn showed them no tower at all, nothing but a heap of rubble in the midst of desolation.  The hated O.P. had disappeared in the night.

0000th Battery rubbed its eyes and wild surmise ran from man to man.  “An unexploded shell must ’ave gorn orf in the night.”

“A mine may ’ave bin laid under ’er, and somethink’s touched it off, like.”

But the real explanation, stranger still, was supplied later by a letter dropped from a Taube flying over the Battery’s position.  It ran thus:—­

“Having noticed with regret that the enemy objected to the tower in front of X position, the Ober-Kommando gave orders to have it removed, in the interests of the surrounding country.”