“Trench coat.”

“But you’ve never been in the trenches.”

“I know.  That’s the idea.”]

* * * * *

Letters to people I don’t know.

(No answers required, thank you.)

To Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, Head of the German Peace Delegation.

The enthralling volume, entitled Preliminary Terms of Peace, on which your attention is being engrossed at the present moment, is said to be of the same length as A Tale of Two Cities.  In other respects there is little resemblance traceable between the two works.  A more striking likeness is to be found between the present volume and a document produced (also in the neighbourhood of Paris) by the late Prince Bismarck in 1871.  On your return home, if the fancy appeals to you, you might, out of these two publications, construct a very readable romance and call it Two Tales of One City.  I think this would be a better name for it than Vice-Versailles.

To Signor Orlando.

Apart from our love for Italy we are, of course, naturally prejudiced in favour of a man who got his surname from one of our own SHAKSPEARE’S heroes, and has consequently given us several easy chances of making little As-you-like-it jokes for the Press in our simple unsophisticated way.  All the same I think you were wrong in dropping out of the Big Four like that.  If every other Allied delegate were to go off home whenever he couldn’t get his own way, or whenever he differed from President WILSON, there might be nobody left to meet the German representatives or to sign any sort of Peace terms.  The enemy might even start a Big Four of their own and begin to talk.  What should we do then?  We might have to send for Marshal FOCH.  I’m not sure that in any case this wouldn’t be the best plan.

But perhaps you will be back in Paris before this letter reaches you.  All roads lead to Rome, and there must be at least one that leads out of it again.

To Ferdinand, Fox.

If news of the outside world ever reaches you in your earth, and you read the discussions on the question whether your old friend WILLIAM ought to be hanged, it can hardly have escaped Your Nosiness that nothing is said about your own claim to similar treatment.  Those who never rightly appreciated you may imagine that you will meekly consent to forgo that claim.  But, if I know anything of your proud and princely nature, you are, on the other hand, bitterly chagrined at the thought that you have been forgotten so soon.

To a British “Sportsman.”