Tea in the dug-out—­ten francs.  Trips through trenches, accompanied by trained guides reciting selected passages from the outpourings of our special correspondents—­ten francs.  At night grand S.O.S. rocket and Very light display—­ten francs.  While for a further twenty francs the tourist will be allowed to pick up as many souvenirs in the way of rolls of barbed wire, dud bombs and blind crumps as he can stagger away with.  By this means the country will be cleared of its explosive matter and I shall be able to spend my declining years in Park Lane, or, anyway, Tooting.

Our Albert Edward has not been making any plans as to his future lately, but just now it looks very much as if his future will be spent in gaol.  It happened this way.  He had been up forward doing some O. Pipping.  While he was there he made friends with a battery and persuaded the poor fools into doing some shooting under his direction.  He says it is great fun sitting up in your O. Pip, a pipe in your teeth, a telescope clapped to your blind eye, removing any parts of the landscape that you take a dislike to.

“I don’t care for that tree at A 29.b.5.8",” you say to the telephone.  “It’s altogether too crooked (or too straight).  Off with its head!” and, hey presto! the offending herb is not.  Or, “That hill at C 39.d.7.4” is quite absurd; it’s ridiculously lop-sided.  I think we’ll have a valley there instead.”  And lo! the absurd excrescence goes west in a puff of smoke.

Our Albert Edward spent a most enjoyable week altering the geography of Europe to suit his taste.  Then one morning he made a trifling error of about thirty degrees and some few thousand yards and removed the wrong village.

“One village looks very much like another, and what are a few thousand yards this way or that in a war of world-wide dimensions?  Gentlemen, let us not be trivial,” said our Albert Edward to the red-hatted people who came weeping to his O. Pip.  Nevertheless some unpleasantness resulted, and our Albert Edward came home to shelter in the bosom of us, his family.

The unpleasantness spread, for twenty-four hours later came a chit for our Albert Edward, saying if he had nothing better to do would he drop in and swoop yarns with the General at noon that day?  Our Albert Edward made his will, pulled on his parade boots, drank half a bottle of brandy neat, kissed us farewell and rode off to his doom.  As he passed the borders of the camp The O’Murphy uncorked himself from a drain, and, seeing his boon-companion faring forth a-horse, abandoned the rat-strafe and trotted after him.

A word or two explaining The O’Murphy.  Two years ago we were camped at one end of a certain damp dark gully up north.  Thither came a party of big marines and a small Irish terrier, bringing with them a long naval gun, which they covered with a camouflage of sackcloth and ashes and let off at intervals.  Whenever the long gun was about to fire the small dog went mad, bounced about behind