In their spirit, too, they are part of the stern and stirring time. On the sea one morning I was awakened by "Billy Buttons"--I was his christener. His "Hot water, sir," was shrill and cheery; and his smile was the map of Ireland. On this particular morning I sat up in bed and said sternly, very sternly, "Billy Buttons, what are you doing here, anyhow?" and like a shot the sturdy lad sent back the answer, "Doing my bit, sir; doing my bit." His daddy sailed the sea bringing bread to Britain until his ship went down unwarned; a brother died in France; a brother-in-law was killed in the battle of Jutland; another brother was then recovering from a wound received in a submarine attack; a sister was a nurse, but Billy seemed quite as proud, I am ashamed to say, of another sister who was an "actress"; and Billy himself, Billy of the sixteen blazing buttons, whose years entitled him to only fourteen, was "doing his bit." _Blessed Billy Buttons!_ * * * * * London is massive and slow to arouse. During an air raid I saw women knitting in the basement of the hotel whither the management had tried to hurry its guests, and the trams only slightly quickened their pace. London has learned in the years of this war that "haste makes waste" and that "direct hits" from airplanes respect not even the stoutest buildings anyhow. Of course, shrapnel is a different proposition, and one is very foolish to walk abroad when the "barrage" is under way. One day I saw an aviator "loop the loop" directly above Piccadilly Circus. He did the trick repeatedly while not more than four hundred feet above the hotel roof. Scores of people in the streets did not turn away from staring into shop windows. At another time I saw two "silver queens"; beautiful beyond words these dirigibles were when they manoeuvred in the still air above St. Paul's. For these the crowds did turn from their mundane pursuits. * * * * * My first war visit to London almost convinced me that it was a city of the "woman of the cigarette," and that she had few sisters, if any, who were not victims of her habit. In the dining-room of my hotel I found literally scores of women, perhaps as many as three hundred, smoking. The young, the middle-aged, and the old, were all at it. I saw a young mother calmly blow smoke over the head of her eight-year old son, who displayed only a mild interest. And what I saw in the hotel I witnessed in every down-town eating-place that I visited. During my entire journey across England I witnessed a wild nicotine debauch, for in every public place tobacco was king, and his throne of smoke filled everywhere. English railway-carriages are marked "smoking" or left undesignated, but nowadays (this does not apply to Scotland) every compartment is in reality a smoker. A man in uniform, particularly, wherever he finds himself, brings forth the inevitable "pill-box"; and there is none to say him nay.