DEAR GRETCHEN,--Awful bad luck for poor Schneider. He went to enlist and was told to register! Of course he's got a streak of the Persian in him on his mother's side, and used to brag about it, as we all know; but now it's done him in the eye, and he's fairly mad. Carl is in the commissariat and tells me we've got three million tins of sardines; so that's all right as far as it goes; but, if there's any weakness in the victualling department, I shall be the first to leave the colours.
They're making one huge mistake. The dogs are called out too. You know what German dogs are--sausage-food, we call them. Of course they'll be cut up and give the show away. But, if they're in the first line with us behind them, they'll have to fight somebody.
Albrecht is in the Royal Blacks (Empress's own). Max has joined the 3rd Tabbies, and I've got a command in the 10th Tortoiseshells.
P.S.--It's a joke with the Tabby regiments that they've got their stripes already.
"Ste. Menehould is 32 miles due west of Verdun. Montfaucon is 18 miles north-east of Ste. Menehould and a dozen miles north-west of Verdun."--_Manchester Guardian._
The War has changed many things; among them the triangle's old habit of having two of its sides together greater than the third. But there; "necessity," as the IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR says, "knows no law."
Illustration: _Humorist (to Cinema Commissionaire)._ "NOW VEN, WILHELM, GIVE US ONE OR TWO GOOSE-STEPS!"
Dear Charles,--Half-a-dozen officers of _the_ battalion, including your own pet terrier, have got cut off from the main body, but are all alive and well, as you shall hear. We have come down from our war to our peace station in order to gather together the few hundred recruits who have been enrolled to bring up the brigade to its proper establishment, and fill the places of those luckless fellows whose flesh was too weak for Imperial service, however willing their spirit might have been. I must say I was more sorry for the "medically unfit" than I have ever been for anyone in this hard world, when we took affectionate leave of them.
The recruit is an excellent fellow, whose only fault is that he didn't start before. Now and then he is a plutocrat, as I have found to my cost. It was my first job to prearrange the lodging of two hundred of them in their temporary billet, an unoccupied mansion originally designed to house twenty persons at the outside. There was an overflow, as you may imagine, which had to be lodged in the outhouses. The garage I marked out for twenty-five, leaving it to themselves to decide whether or not the inspection-pit was the place of honour reserved for the N.C.O. in charge. Other business prevented my receiving them at the front gate and conducting them to their several rooms. When I did arrive on the scene it was my heartrending duty to explain to Privates Anstruther and Vernon that the reason why they couldn't find their bedroom was because they had filled it with their motor-cars. But it is wonderful how people can settle down to anything; an hour later I found the twenty-five of them comfortably tucked in for the night, crooning unanimously, "There's no place like home!" To-day they have chalked up on the wall, "The Ritz Private Boarding Establishment; well-aired beds; bring your own straw. Excellent cuisine. _No_ garage."