[Illustration: SAINT VALENTINE'S DAY IN THE FATHERLAND. It chanced that on the fourteenth day of February the boy Cupid strayed into the precincts of Potsdam, and came all unawares upon the War Lord; who deeming him to be an alien babe essayed to make a characteristic end of him.] * * * * * [Illustration: _Disgusted Instructor._ "NOW THEN, NONE O' THEM PEACE TACTICS! 'ERE I'M TRYING TO TEACH YER 'OW TO KILL THE ENEMY, AND YER GOES AND KISSES 'IM!"] * * * * * BLANCHE'S LETTERS. WAR FASHIONS. _Park Lane._ DEAREST DAPHNE,--People are going to the theatre a good deal, but not in the old way. We wait in the queue now, and work our way up into the gallery. We leave the stalls and boxes to _ces autres_. "Olga" has created a simply charming queue-coat, heavy grey frieze, with plenty of pockets and a cap to match with ear-pieces. You take a parcel of sandwiches to eat while you're waiting (the _dernier cri_ is to wrap the parcel in a spotted handkerchief), and, if you want to be immensely and utterly right, you'll _walk_ home and buy a piece of fried fish on the way for your supper. A propos, there's quite a good little story being told about Lady Goreazure and these topsy-turvy times. She was in the gallery at the Incandescent the other night, and, on coming down, the gallery people, finding it was pouring in torrents, crowded into the chief entrance for shelter, to the enormous disgust of the stalls and boxes, who were just coming out. A rose-coloured satin gown with ante-war bare arms and shoulders, an ermine wrap, and a paste hair-bandeau was particularly furious, and announced loudly that it was "an abominable shame to mix us up with the gallery people in this way." Lady Goreazure thought she knew the voice, and, turning, recognised in the angry pink-satin person her maid, Dawkins, who left her some months ago to go into munition work. She's a skilled hand now and simply coining money, as she told Lady G. in a hurried furtive whisper, adding, "Please don't talk to me any more. I shouldn't like my friends to see that I know anyone from the gallery."