M. X.... bets that within three months Italy will be at war, but not Roumania. Stakes a dinner in Paris in 1917, for which the winner shall choose the restaurant and make up the menu. The page of this wager is scribbled over with emendations and remarks. The number of signatures in the two columns is equal. The winners will be awkward in their triumph. Sunday, March 28. Midnight: at 38° 02´ N. and 18° 7´ E. M. J.... bets with M. Z.... that the Viviani ministry will not last out the year 1915. Stakes: the two bettors being unmarried, the loser agrees to act as groomsman at the marriage of the winner, who agrees to choose him a pretty maid of honor. The page is sprinkled with facetious comments. To tell the truth, I do not know which are wittier, those which mention the wager, or those which discuss the stakes. Between the fiancée and the Premier, the maid of honor, the winner and the loser, it is all humor of the cleverest kind. Tuesday, March 30. 2.30 A.M. at 38° 10´ N. and 16° 23´ E. M. W.... wagers that inside of a month one of the seven Ionian cruisers will be sunk by a submarine and lost without anything’s being saved. For this wager I see neither any stake nor opposing signature. _4 April._ For seven weeks I have not been off the cruiser, but this morning I was given a new duty; namely, to land during our coaling; my turn has come to provide the food for my twenty-five comrades of the mess. At no time is this a pleasant business; during our war campaign it requires an angelic patience, for supplies are difficult to get and the quality uncertain. Each one of us watches without enthusiasm the day approach when he becomes the scapegoat for the dyspeptics and those with ailing livers. But the implacable schedule, drawn up by lot before our departure from Toulon, appoints a new “chief of the mess” every two months. You housekeepers who complain of the price of provisions and the bad quality of the eggs had better take passage on the ships which move in the Ionian Sea, and you will learn about unknown miseries. It is no mere question in our latitudes, of varying the menus, of serving such a fish or such a meat, nor even of calculating almost to a half pound what will feed the household without waste. The task is more difficult.