are full of biscuits and chocolate, but it is awkward for Lady Julia, who had hoped that they would never meet again.  So they sit on the beach back to back (drawn by Dana Gibson) and throw sarcastic remarks over their shoulders at each other.  In the end he tames her proud spirit—­I think by hiding the turtles’ eggs from her—­and the next liner but one takes the happy couple back to civilization.

But it is time we had some poetry.  I propose to give you one serious poem about robins, and one double-page humorous piece, well illustrated in colours.  I think the humorous verses must deal with hunting.  Hunting does not lend itself to humour, for there are only two hunting jokes —­the joke of the horse which came down at the brook and the joke of the Cockney who overrode hounds; but there are traditions to keep up, and the artist always loves it.  So far we have not considered the artist sufficiently.  Let us give him four full pages.  One of pretty girls hanging up mistletoe, one of the squire and his family going to church in the snow, one of a brokendown coach with highwaymen coming over the hill, and one of the postman bringing loads and loads of parcels.  You have all Christmas in those four pictures.  But there is room for another page—­let it be a coloured page, of half a dozen sketches, the period and the lettering very early English.  “Ye Baron de Marchebankes calleth for hys varlet.”  “Ye varlet cometh righte hastilie—–­” You know the delightful kind of thing.

I confess that this is the sort of Christmas number which I love.  You may say that you have seen it all before; I say that that is why I love it.  The best of Christmas is that it reminds us of other Christmases; it should be the boast of Christmas numbers that they remind us of other Christmas numbers.

But though I doubt if I shall get quite what I want from any one number this year, yet there will surely be enough in all the numbers to bring Christmas very pleasantly before the eyes.  In a dull November one likes to be reminded that Christmas is coming.  It is perhaps as well that the demands of the colonies give us our Christmas numbers so early.  At the same time it is difficult to see why New Zealand wants a Christmas number at all.  As I glance above at the plan of my model paper I feel more than ever how adorable it would be—­but not, oh not with the thermometer at a hundred in the shade.

No Flowers by Request

If a statement is untrue, it is not the more respectable because it has been said in Latin.  We owe the war, directly, no doubt, to the Kaiser, but indirectly to the Roman idiot who said, “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”  Having mislaid my Dictionary of Quotations I cannot give you his name, but I have my money on him as the greatest murderer in history.

Yet there have always been people who would quote this classical lie as if it were at least as authoritative as anything said in the Sermon on the Mount.  It was said a long time ago, and in a strange language—­that was enough for them.  In the same way they will say, “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”  But I warn them solemnly that it will take a good deal more than this to stop me from saying what I want to say about the recently expired month of February.