"But if by good fortune you chance for to get A ship that ain't hungry or wicked or wet, That answers her hellum both a-weather and lee, Goes well on a bowline and well running free, A skipper that's neither a fool nor a brute, And mates not too free with the toe of their boot, A sails and a bo'sun that's bred to their trade, And a slush with a notion how vittles is made, And a crowd that ain't half of 'em Dagoes or Dutch, Or Mexican greasers or niggers or such, You stick to her close as you would to your wife, She's the sort that you only find once in your life; And ships is like women, you take it from me, That, if they _are_ bad 'uns, they're the devil," says he. C. F. S. * * * * * "With regard to prison labour, it is stated that the manufacture of war stories had continued to employ every available inmate." _Christian Science Monitor._ We had wondered where some of them came from. * * * * * [Illustration: SOUNDING THE "ALL CLEAR." WITH GRATEFUL COMPLIMENTS TO THE GALLANT VOLUNTEERS OF THE BRITISH MINE CLEARANCE FORCE.] * * * * * [Illustration: "HULLO, GEORGE! AND WHEN'S THE WAR GOING TO BE OVER, EH?"] * * * * * THE QUESTIONABLE ALIEN. William, my hitherto unventuresome friend William, is going abroad. I cannot be certain why. Perhaps he no longer feels his heroism equal to the strain of living in a country fit for heroes. It may be that he has unwittingly incubated a bacillus which figures in novels as the "Call of the Wild." Anyhow, William is going abroad--so much so that, if he went any farther, he would be on his way home again. I need not say that I felt called upon to help William through this trying period, and our preparations proceeded satisfactorily until the clever geographers who arrange these things nowadays discovered that William could fetch the Far East by way of the Far West. Then the international complications set in. First, William's passport--a healthy enough document at the start--had to be carried round the diplomatic quarter of London until it broke out into a thick rash of supplementary _visas_. Next we sought out the moneychangers in their dens, to transmute William's viaticum bit by bit into four foreign currencies. Then a Great Power through whose territory William will have to pass apparently was nervous of his approach and instituted a grand inquisition into the status and antecedents of the Alien (William).