It is perhaps too much to expect that the gentleman who sets up the type of THE FRIEND should know the usual structure of a double-acrostic, or that he should trouble himself with such details as my punctuation and spelling; but he might have let my lines continue to scan and retain some germ of meaning; and, even if he did not realise that the _proem_ was intended for verse, he might have let it stand as English prose. His statement that "according to the writer" the answer gives "the most appropriate cognomen," &c., is interesting, as anything must be that falls from his stick. It further reveals a wealth of imagination of which his previous efforts gave us no hint. H. C. Writer of the Double Acrostic in Saturday's issue. _Bloemfontein, 24th March, 1900._ (Please don't shoot the Editors, they are doing their best.--ED., FRIEND.) * * * * * TOWARDS WAR. BY L. D.-J. The crowded platform at Waterloo, the groups of men in great-coats gathered round figures in ulsters with travelling rugs upon their arms; the long train with its dirty painted boards above the carriages inscribed "Aldershot," "Basingstoke," "Southampton"; the last joke, the last catchword, the last farewell grip of parting hands; the sudden remembrance of need of newspaper or sandwich; the bustle and hurry of railway officials, servants, late voyagers, or later friends, thronging the platform from refreshment-room to bookstall: these tell little to the observer of war and its alarms. Only at either end of the platform where the great doors of the baggage-brakes yawn upon piles of valises, beneath whose white-painted rank, name, regiment, the bold initials "S.A.F.F." catch the eye, guarded by soldier servants, field-service cap on right eye, uniform hidden under collared great-coat; or on the racks of the compartments, where curiously shaped tin cases cover the cocked hat or the helmet, and where, showing through a bundle of canes, golf-clubs, and polo sticks, is seen the clumsy brown leather shape of a sword case, is there a hint of military significance, a clue to the tension of the thronged faces, taking a farewell under circumstances not of the ordinary.