A good song, but (so it has always struck us) a clumsy title. * * * * * Extract from Army Routine Orders, Expeditionary Force, Nov. 9th:-- "It is notified for information that shooting in the Forest of Clairmarais and certain portions of the adjacent country is preserved." Clever Germans are now disguising themselves as pheasants. * * * * * THE PRICE OF PATRIOTISM. Helen and I are economising; so the other evening we dined at the Rococo. "That's no economy," you cry; so let me explain. In common with most other folk who are not engaged in the manufacture of khaki, or rifles, or Army woollens, or heavy siege-guns (to which I had not the foresight to turn my attention before the war came along), we have found it necessary to adopt a policy of retrenchment and reform; and one of our first moves in this direction was to convert Evangeline from a daily into a half-daily. Evangeline is not a newspaper but a domestic servant, and before the new order was issued she had been in the habit of arriving at our miniature flat at 7.30 in the morning (when it wasn't 8.15), and retiring at 9 in the evening. Now, however, Evangeline goes after lunch, and Helen, who has bought a shilling cookery book, prepares the dinner herself. On the day in question Helen suddenly decided to spend the afternoon repairing a week's omissions on the part of Evangeline. It proved a veritable labour of Hercules, the flat being, as Helen with near enough accuracy gave me to understand, an "Aegaean stable." Tea-time came, but brought no tea. Shortly before seven Helen struck, and declared (this time without any classical metaphor) that she wasn't going to cook any dinner that evening. Not to be outdone, I affirmed in reply that even if she did cook it I wasn't going to clear it away. So we cleaned and adorned ourselves and groped our way to the Rococo. We were both too tired to go to the trouble of choosing our dinner, and it was therefore that we elected to make our way through the _table-d'hote_, to which we felt that our appetite, unimpaired by tea, could do full justice. Luxuriously we toyed with _hors-d'oeuvre_, while the orchestra patriotically intimated that ours is a Land of Hope and Glory; blissfully we consumed our soup, undeterred by repeated reminders of the distance to Tipperary. It was with the fish that the trouble started.