* * * * * THE SILENCE OF WAR. I have a confession to make. Once in the happy far-off days--it seems ages since--I was bored by my fellow-passengers' conversation in the train. I daresay that they were equally bored by mine; but against that view there is the fact that this is my confession and not theirs. Well, I am punished now. I admit that I would give a good deal to hear Griffith's story of how he did the dog-leg hole in three again. There sits Griffith opposite to me, and no one would know that he had ever handled a club. He has become a golf-mute. Or think of Purvis. The recital of the performances of Purvis's new car lent an additional terror to railway travelling. I have forgotten the very make of his car now. I cannot particularise the number of its cylinders or say if it is electrically started. Purvis is conversationally punctured. There was, too, one recalls, an Insurance Act. Wilson felt a special grievance because he employed an aged gardener, out of charity, two days a week. He talked, if I remember correctly, about a cruel fourpence and a mythical ninepence. He read fierce letters he had composed for the Press, and when the papers published them, which was seldom, he read them to us all over again. As an anti-insurance agitator Wilson now comes under the unemployment section of the accursed Act. And the strange people who intruded with third-class tickets, and trampled on our toes, and smoked shag, and talked repulsively about the Cockspurs and Chelsea's new purchase from Oldham Athletic, and gave each other "dead certs" of appalling incertitude, and passed remarks which to my mind showed a shocking lack of respect for the upper and middle classes! We were not one class in those times. May it all come back to us soon--all the old chatter! Come back to us, Sir THOMAS LIPTON and the Cup! Come back to us, GLOOMY DEAN! Come back to us, Ninepence for Fourpence. Come back to us, "dead certs" and "also rans." Come back golf and motor-cars. Come back, Wicked Government and Wicked Opposition. Life is too painfully interesting now. I long to be bored again. But it must be boredom with honour. * * * * * MR. PUNCH'S WAR CORRESPONDENCE. NEW STYLE. Hearing that the German troops were advancing from the North-East along the line Malines--Mons--Mezières--Soissons--Verdun--Belfort, I immediately made off due South-West for a reason I may not give. I managed with the utmost difficulty to find someone to carry my kit, but at length persuaded an old peasant whom I found weeding (probably the last weeds he would ever dig) to act as my courier, and even then I had to resort to the vulgar strategy of pretending to be a Uhlan.