We are glad to note that in the same article there is a subsequent and reassuring reference to our contemporary's "well-deserved reputation for straightforwardness and accuracy." * * * * * The author of _Secrets of the German War Office_ writes of the German FOREIGN MINISTER'S "atrocious taste in waistcoats":-- "The one he had on still sticks in my memory. It was a lurid peach-blossom creation, spotted with greed." It is to guard against this that so many of his compatriots tuck their napkins in at their necks. * * * * * AN ESCAPED PRISONER. It was summertime, years ago, in the early days of the war. Having distributed myself quite satisfactorily within a hammock, I had just decided that nothing short of invasion or the luncheon bell should disturb me, when my flapper niece shot forth in my direction from the French windows of the morning-room. In one hand she flourished an empty birdcage and in the other what proved to be a tin of enormous hemp seeds. "Wake up!" she cried as she approached rapidly through the near distance. "The precious Balaam has escaped! The brute must have got out while I was fetching his clean water, and the windows were _wide_ open!" The prospect of a canary hunt across country with a temperature at 80 degrees in the shade positively made me shiver. "Your father is the man to catch it for you, Eileen," I suggested. "He's most awfully good at catching things. I--er think he's somewhere on the tennis-court." "He's not, because he was splashing about in the bathroom just now when I wanted to fill Balaam's water-bottle." "All right," I said resignedly, "I'll come. Was Balaam the man or the ass? I forget. And while we're at it why should you call the bird Balaam at all?" Eileen was in no mood for foolish questionings. "Get up!" she ordered. "I call him Balaam because he's not a proper canary--he's a mule." "Then I am not at all sure," I began hopefully, "that I can countenance the keeping of mules in birdcages! Should the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals get to hear of it, they would certainly----" "There he is!" interrupted Eileen shrilly as something yellowish flew jerkily across a neighbouring cabbage bed. "That's Balaam! Take the cage. I'll wait here in case he comes back!" By the time I had reached the further end of the cabbage bed I was just in time to see a tawny bird vanish over a hedge, flop tantalisingly across the road and disappear among the branches of an apple-tree on the other side. What I now see to have been a mistaken idea of my duty towards Eileen led me painfully through two hedges to the foot of the tree in whose branches Balaam the Mule was possibly enjoying the first-fruits of his liberty.