There are advantages in solitary feeding. Haven't you ever wanted, when confronted with a lunch tongue, to hack out all the nice tonguey bits for yourself and leave the bully beef parts to be used for soup or some other domestic economy? Well, I hack out the tonguey bits every day. True, I usually have to eat the bully beef parts next meal, but--_a la guerre comme a la guerre_--I always might have been casualtied between meals, and then think what a fool I'd feel over my failure to make the most of the first. I've come to the conclusion that this Army isn't really fair. Some regiments I've met always seem to be doing three weeks' rest down Boulogne or Nice or somewhere like that. Thrice and four times have I come and come back to this battalion, and every blessed time they've been either in trenches when I arrived, or situated directly behind the trenches and going up, it might be, to make some more. Sometimes we go up to dig, sometimes to carry, sometimes both. On the night of my re-arrival I went up with the digging party, and have the honour to report the following conversation between a certain one of our diggers and a friend who loomed up carrying about four engineer dug-outs, two coils of barbed wire, and a maul. You could just make out the man under it all as he stumbled erratically along a mud-ridden track. "'Ello, Steve," says the digger, "wot's yer game to-night?" Steve stopped for a second to look at his interrogator and then observed genially as he moved on, "Oh, just killin' time, you know." * * * * * [Illustration: _Officer._ "WHY DO YOU THINK HE WOULDN'T MAKE A GOOD CORPORAL?" _Sergeant (indicating sentry)._ "_'IM_ A CORPORAL! LOR LUMME! WHY, 'IS NAME'S CLARENCE!"] * * * * * TERCENTENARY TWITTERINGS. The letters that follow are only a small selection from those that have been inadvertently forwarded to us in response to the appeal of _The Westminster Gazette_ for suggestions as to the most appropriate method of celebrating SHAKSPEARE'S tercentenary:-- A HINT TO GREATER BRITAIN. The name of the new capital of the Australian Commonwealth is not irrevocably fixed, and it seems to me that a splendid opportunity is now offered our brethren overseas to commemorate the genius of the foremost British man of letters by linking his name with the new Antipodean metropolis. I should not venture to dictate the exact form which it should take, but "Willshake" seems to me to meet the requirements of the case very happily, though the claims of "Avonbard" also deserve consideration. PHILLIBERT HARKER. BIRD AND BARD.