After hearing my story he sent a message to the Admiralty and they ordered my discharge. I was sent to Portsmouth Naval Branch to receive my final papers. On obtaining these I thought I was free; but I was arrested for having failed to register as an alien when I first landed in Liverpool. I was brought before a magistrate and remanded for a week. Acting on advice I wrote to the American Consul at London. The Consul replied that he had been looking for me since June, and he requested the magistrate to release me so that I could be sent back to the United States. The letter to the magistrate took fifteen minutes to read in court. It stated that the whole army had been looking for me, at the instigation of my parents, through the Secretary of State at Washington. The magistrate discharged me at once, regretting my imprisonment for a week and stating that it was no disgrace. I left Portsmouth the next day, Sept. 25, for Liverpool but had to stop over in London for several hours, awaiting the fast mail train. It was shortly after the last Zeppelin raid and, being in uniform, I was allowed to pass the lines, to look at the effects of the bombs. Many houses were wrecked, streets torn up and soldiers were searching the ruins for the missing. Now and then they recovered a body, usually that of a woman or a child. The official death list reported 150 killed. I saw a cartoon reprinted from a German paper, picturing the people of London kneeling in prayer in their cellars during and after a Zeppelin raid. But the fact is that the London police had their hands full keeping the people from rushing out of their houses to get a glimpse of the raider. I reached Liverpool that night and the day following I signed for my passage on the steamship _Minian_, sailing for Boston Oct. 9. While in Liverpool I was offered a position in a munition factory as a gun tester at a salary of four pounds per week, but I refused the offer because I had secured my discharge from the British Navy for the purpose of going home. "BIG-BANG"--STORY OF AN AMERICAN ADVENTURER _A Tale of the Great Trench Mortars_ _Told by C. P. Thompson_ "Big-Bang" was Tommy's name for one of our pioneer trench mortars, invented and operated by a man named X----. The author met X---- in a café not far from the front, and heard from him the details of the story that is here set down. "So far as I am aware," he writes, "the tale is perfectly true. I had it confirmed by the men of the R. E. company to which X---- was attached." Recorded in the _Wide World_. I--THE SOLDIERS IN THE CAFE SALOME