You know his funny way. The boys are now shouting this all about the garden, and trying to roar like lions. I have the greatest difficulty in preventing them from going to fight other children out of sheer patriotism. The darlings do look so nice and smart. I could not resist buying them flags and tin swords and helmets like real soldiers in spite of the Moratorium, which I called by mistake _crematorium_, and James made delightful fun about it. He also said some clever thing about banks which I can't recall; it may come to me later. Every one talks of nothing but the war. Even the errand-boys must have their say; I caught one of them setting up our nice loin chops in the dusty drive and knocking them down with pebbles for bombs; while the girl who fetched the laundry stayed for an hour in the kitchen teaching cook First Aid bandaging, and dinner was spoilt in consequence. However these are all the little discomforts of war and must be borne in a cheerful spirit. Your affectionate Sister, MARY. P.S.--Dear James's joke was about John Bull and bullion. Harry will understand and appreciate it. * * * * * MY BROTHER'S LETTER. Relations used to be for the most part a bore, and, unless rich, it was well that they were disregarded. But the war has altered all that. The war has brought relations, no matter how humble, into fashion. Not all, but some. I have as a matter of fact myself one brother in the Fusiliers, in camp, and another who is a special constable and three times has reported an airship by telephone; but these do not count. It is fathers, brothers, cousins, sons, uncles and nephews at the Front who count. Anyone who can refer to a real relation at the Front is just now conversationally on velvet, while, if a letter from this relation can be produced and read, everyone else must give way. SYDNEY SMITHS, THEODORE HOOKS, RICHARD PORSONS, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAYS even, would be three-a-penny to-day as against one obscure individual who happened to have a brother in the trenches and a letter in his handwriting. But that is not all. There is reflected glory too. To know a person who has a relation at the Front is to be immeasurably promoted socially, and most of the conversations which one overhears in trains and elsewhere have some such opening as this: "A friend of my brother's has seen a Belgian...." "A cousin of my wife's who is a doctor in a field hospital says...." "I know a man who was talking with a wounded Tommy, and he...." "An undergraduate friend of my boy's who is just back from France...." Once stories begun in this way would empty a room; but not so now. Now they no longer devastate but fascinate. It does not matter what the stories are about, the fact remains that an opening gambit which three months ago would stamp a man as a triple bore now holds everyone breathless. In short, relations at last have come to their own. Another achievement of WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN!