During the fall of 1914, Colonel Swinton was the English official eye-witness of the fighting in Flanders and France. Before that he was perhaps best known to the general public as a writer of romances in which was skillfully woven the technique of war. One of his stories, “The Defense of Duffer’s Drift,” is used as a text-book at West Point. NOT A SELF-STARTER “Sam, you ought to get in the aviation service,” a Chicago man told a negro last week. “You are a good mechanic and would come in handy in an aeroplane. How would you like to fly among the clouds a mile high and drop a few bombs down on the Germans?” “I ain’t in no special hurry to fly, Cap,” the negro answered. “When wese up ’bout a mile high, s’pose de engine stopped and de white man told me to git out an’ crank?” TRY IT ON YOUR WIFE Extract from lecture by N. C. O.: “Your rifle is your best friend, take every care of it; treat it as you would your wife; rub it thoroughly with an oily rag every day.” HE WAS GOING AWAY FROM THERE He—“So your dear count was wounded?” She—“Yes, but his picture doesn’t show it.” He—“That’s a front view.” TAKING MOVING PICTURES UNDER SHELL-FIRE TAKING moving pictures while exploding shells from pursuing warships and torpedo-boats are sending up geysers that splash your fleeing launch and stall the motor is a little out of the run of even an American war correspondent’s daily stunt. Capt. F. E. Kleinschmidt, who has been billeted with the Austrian marine forces at Trieste, has recently had such an experience while accompanying an expedition to the Italian coast to remove a field of mines, an occupation quite dangerous enough without the shell-fire. He tells this story in the St. Louis _Post-Dispatch_: