And all the time it is in ——!  And the agent pockets his cheque.  So wars are won and lost.

Just conceive the romance of it.  It is heraldry gone mad.

Myself, however, I incline to another theory as to the origin of these symbols.

A Higher Command enters his office.  Higher Commands always enter.  The office is hung, like a studio in one of Mr. GEORGE MORROW’S pictures, with diagrams of circles and triangles and crosses and straight lines.  The Higher Command, being a man of like passions with ourselves, has just finished tinned Oxford marmalade and a cigarette.  He heads for the “IN” basket on his desk and takes from it the “Arrivals and Departures” paper.  “Ha!” says he to the lady secretary, “I see six new divisions landed yesterday.”  He pauses.  Outside there is no sound to be heard save the loud and continuous crash of the sentry’s hand against his rifle as he salutes the passing A.D.C.’s.  “What about signs?” says the Higher Command.  The lady secretary says nothing.  She floods the carburettor of the typewriter preparatory to thumping out “Ref. attached correspondence” on it.

The Higher Command stares at the diagrams on the wall.  He is feeling strangely light-hearted this morning.  He has won five francs at bridge the night before from the D.A.D.M.O.  A.D.G.S.  And mere circles and squares have somehow lost their savour for him.  He plunges.  “What about a lion?” he says.

The lady secretary opens the throttle and plays a few bars on the “cap.” key.

“A red lion?” says the Higher Command seductively.

“It has already been done,” says the lady secretary coldly.

“Who by—­I mean by whom?” inquires the H.C. indignantly.

“By the Deputy Assistant Director of Higher Commands, when you were on leave last week,” she tells him.

He mutters a military oath against the D.A.D.H.C.  Then his face clears.

“Tigers?” he suggests hopefully.

“We might do a green tiger,” she says reluctantly.

“With yellow stripes!” shouts the H.C.

“On a mauve background,” says she, warming to it.

And so one division is disposed of.  But it is not always so, of course.

After a Hun counter-attack, for instance, the H.C. may gaze morosely on his geometrical figures and throw off a little thing in triangles and St. Andrew’s crosses.  Or when the moon is at the full you may have a violet allotted to you as your symbol.  One never knows.  My own divisional sign, for instance, is an iddy-umpty plain on a field plainer.  We vary the heraldry by ringing changes on the colours.  On our brigade arm-band it becomes an iddy-umpty gules on a field azure.  If I could be quite sure of the heraldic slang for puce I would tell you what it is on our Army Corps arm-band.  On a waggon it used to be an iddy-umpty blank on a field muddy.  But administrative genius has changed all that.  A routine order, the other day, ordered a pink border to be painted round it, and this first simple essay of the departed Morse goes now through the villages of France in a bed of roses.