In the Dining-room, reached by a progress over carpets and rugs representative of all the best periods of Oriental art, it would be fairly easy to stage a review on the table itself; while in the Music-room a hundred or so lorries could be parked without attracting observation too glaringly. Should the need arise, the Library could accommodate a battalion on parade, a rifle range or sufficient office room for Q branch of a division. A labyrinth of corridors and servants' bedrooms harbours the rank and file, and it is said that the number of kitchens, pantries and cellars in the north and east wings runs into three figures. The Divisional Commander called it "homely"; the Corps Commander remarked that its style was "not cramped, anyhow--what?" and the Army Commander pronounced it very "cosy." The first two days I did not see my servant at all. On Wednesday he turned up just before lunch. On Monday and Tuesday, he explained, he had wandered through corridors and passages trying to find my room, and, by rising an hour before _reveille_, he thought he would be able to get from his quarters to mine by about breakfast-time. We used to adjourn to the billiard-room after dinner, but gave it up because it was necessary to stop play at half-past ten in order to be in bed by midnight. Signals is worried because he has not enough line left to reach Battalions, all available supplies having been used up in connecting the General's room with various parts of the Schloss. We are continually late for dinner owing to errors in judging the distances from one room to another. Our once happy family has dissolved into silent morose individuals, for we have grown strange and distant to one another. Liaison between departments has broken down, and the Staff-Captain whom I saw yesterday in the distance is suffering from premature decay. But a solution has been found, for the Engineers are unloading a couple of Nissen huts to put up in the hall, and we shall soon be a united family once more. * * * * * "The surveyor said that as things were at present he had little or no authority over the men who, for the most part, simply considered him his equal."--_Trade Paper._ If he doesn't take a stronger line the men will consider him his inferior. * * * * * From a short story:-- "She was a slip of a thing, with the sort of eyes that go well with curly long lashes--if they are blue, as hers were."--_Weekly Paper._ Our local _coiffeur_ only stocks the old-fashioned peroxide. * * * * * [Illustration: OVERWEIGHTED. PRESIDENT WILSON. "HERE'S YOUR OLIVE BRANCH. NOW GET BUSY." DOVE OF PEACE. "OF COURSE I WANT TO PLEASE EVERYBODY; BUT ISN'T THIS A BIT THICK?"] * * * * * [Illustration: THE STRENUOUS LIFE.