War has brought Wiggins and me together in novel surroundings. He has a liking for all that is venturesome and an innocent predilection for anything that partakes of conspiracy. Wiggins sits and collects all the military telegrams from the different fronts, including the western; Wiggins reads, answers and transmits private telegrams from Russia to other countries. Wiggins goes through the letters found in the enemy's trenches, and his staff is competent to deal with all the Babel of languages of Austria. Wiggins interrogates the prisoners and fixes the movements of the enemy's troops; there is a delightful caricature of him, standing like a wild boar at bay, among a crowd of gaping Austrians. Wiggins looks after the aeroplanes; and sometimes goes himself on the most perilous of scouting expeditions. On one of these I found with him a man of the most quaint simplicity, an artist, who used to sit down between the lines and sketch the enemy's positions. He described with an impersonal unconcern how the bullets passed him. "But what do you do when you have finished?" I asked. "Oh, I go on to another position." "But surely it is very dangerous work?" "Yes, I suppose there are about ninety-nine chances in a hundred of my getting killed; but I haven't any children. I should rather like to do my work from an aeroplane; I think that would be safer." "Wiggins" asked my help in reading some of the letters from the trenches. One way or another, I have seen a good many of these. The great thing that strikes me is that they are so good--that the war after all brings out the best of every one. The Italian letters (of soldiers in the Austrian army) are particularly graceful and pretty; but then most Italians are gentlefolk. One writes: "I hear that T. is a prisoner and with the Russians and that they are much better off than in the line of fire." Another, hoping for the end of the war by Christmas, writes: "For the Babe Jesus we hope for peace." "Angelina" writing to "Carissimo Gustavo" ends thus: "If we are meant to be married, few letters are enough; and if we are not, no letters are any use."