Much have I sacrificed: my happy home, My faith in experts' figures, half my money, The fortnight that I meant to spend in Rome, My weekly effort to be fairly funny; But these are trifles, light as air when weighed Against this other--Breakfast Marmalade. Fair was the porridge in the days of peace, And still more fair the cream and sugar taken; Plump were the twin poached eggs, yet not obese, Upon their thrones of toast, and crisp the bacon-- I face their loss undaunted, unafraid, If only I may keep my Marmalade. An evening press without Callisthenes; A tables Staff; an immobile spaghetti; A Shaw with whom the Common Man agrees; A Zambra searching vainly for Negretti; When spades are trumps, a hand without a spade-- So is my breakfast lacking Marmalade. O Northcliffe (Lord)! O Keiller! O Dundee! O Crosse and Blackwell, Limited! O Seville! O orange groves along the Middle Sea! (O Jaffa, for example) O the devil-- Let Beef and Butter, Rolls and Rabbits fade, But give me back my love, my Marmalade. THE STORY THAT WENT WEST "Why don't you write a war story?" said Celia one autumn day when that sort of story was popular. "Because everybody else does," I said. "I forget how many bayonets we have on the Western Front, but there must be at least twice as many fountain-pens." "It needn't be about the Western Front." "Unfortunately that's the only front I know anything about." "I thought writers used their imagination sometimes," said Celia to anybody who might happen to be listening. "Oh, well, if you put it like that," I said, "I suppose I must." So I settled down to a story about the Salonica Front. The scene of my story was laid in an old clay hut amid the wattles. "What are wattles?" asked Celia, when I told her the good news. "Local colour," I explained. "They grow in Bulgaria." "Are you sure?" "I'm sure that these ones did; I don't know about any others." Of course more local colour was wanted than a mere wattle or two. It was necessary therefore for my Bulgarians always to go about in _comitadjis_. Celia thought that these were a kind of native trouser laced at the knee. She may be right. My own impression is that they are a species of platoon. Anyhow the Bulgars always went about in them. There was a fierce fight which raged round the old clay hut in the wattles. The Greeks shouted "[Greek: Tuptô tuptomai]" The Serbs, for reasons into which I need not enter, were inarticulate with rage. With the French and British I had, of course, no difficulty, and the Bulgars (fortunately) were content with hoarse guttural noises. It was a fierce fight while it lasted, and I was sorry when it was over, because for the first time I began to feel at home with my story. I need not say that many a Bulgar had licked the wattles before I had finished. Unfortunately something else happened before I had finished.