Wounds that are dealt us by our friends
    Are faithful, but the name endearing
  Of friend is hardly his who lends
    And then denies the bard a hearing.

  How then, O brother songsters, can
    You take it lying down, and meekly
  Submit to this tyrannic ban
    Laid on you by The British Weekly?

  No, no, you’ll rather emulate
    The Minstrel Boy, and we shall find you
  Storming its barred and bolted gate
    With reams of lyrics slung behind you.

* * * * *

“The time is ripe for the authorities to stop all street traffic and to order all unauthorised persons to take cover under penalty at the approach of the air raiders.”—­Daily Paper.

Personally, as a means of shelter we prefer the coal-cellar to any penalty.

* * * * *

“Will Mr. Russell deny that 660 million gallons of milk were produced in Ireland last year, of which half went to the creameries and more to the margarine factories and to England?”—­Letter in Irish Paper.

The Irish gallon would appear to be as elastic as the Irish mile.

* * * * *

“DIVISIONAL SIGNS.”

The purpose of a Divisional Sign is to deceive the enemy.  Let us suppose that you belong to the 580th Division, B.E.F.  You do not put “580” on your waggons and your limbers and on the tin-hats of your Staff.  Certainly not.  The enemy would know about you if you did that.  You have a secret sign, such as tramps chalk on your wall at home, to let other tramps know that you are a stingy devil with a dog.  There are many theories as to how these signs are chosen.  One is that a committee of officers sits in camera for forty-eight hours without food or drink till it has decided on an arrow or a cat, or a dandelion, rampant.

Let us take it that a cat is chosen—­a quiet thing in cats—­crimson on a green-and-white chess-board background.  Forthwith (as adjutants say) a crimson cat on a green-and-white chess-board background is painted and embroidered on everything that can be painted and embroidered on—­limbers and waggons and hand-carts and arm-bands and the tin-hats of the Staff.  And the Division goes forth as it were masked, disguised, just like one of Mr. LE QUEUX’S diplomatist heroes at a fancy-dress ball, wearing a domino.  You perceive the mystery of it?  None of your naked numbers for us B.E.F. men.  The Division marches through a village, and the dear old Man Who Knows, cropping up again in the army, says, “Ha!  A red cat on a green-and-white chess-board back-ground?  That’s the Seventeenth Division.”

You see it now?  The enemy agent overhears.  The false news is sent crackling through the ether to Berlin (wireless, my dear, in the cellar, of course).  The German General Staff looks up the village on a map, and sticks into it a flag marked 17.  Not 580, mark you.  And the General Staff frowns, and Majesty pushes the ends of its moustache into its eyes at the knowledge that the Seventeenth Division is in ——.