Mary grey (age 10).

* * * * *

Our allies.

It is with great pleasure that I take up my pen to write about Our Allies.  They are France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Serbia, Portugal, Rumania, and America.  I think thats all at present but eight is a good number.  To begin with France.  In time of peace the French are a gay and polite people which is very nice I think.  They are noted for their coffee and for their fashions as both are better than ours.  And all the women can cook.  How beautiful it would be for England if she could imitate her sister country in these things!  I can make a cake but not a very light one.  Now let us look at Verdun on the map.  It is a great fortress and the Germans thought they could take it but I rejoice to say they couldn’t as the bravery and patrioticness of the French troops came in the way.  Belgium is the next on the list.  Belgium is a little country and Germany is a big one so of course the Germans had the best of it at first but they won’t much longer.  So it will be all right soon if we dont eat too many sweets and things.  Russia, Italy, Serbia, Portugal, Rumania, America and Montynegro, which I forgot before, are all splendid countries but space forbids more.

Kathleen Chalfont (age 12).

* * * * *

The German soldiers’ opinion of “retirement according to plan”:  “Each for himself; and the Devil take the Hindenburg.”

* * * * *

    “To fill up the gaps in the ranks trains of German reserves are being
    hushed to the front incessantly.”—­Star.

We don’t believe this.  The Bosch has long given up the habit of singing as he goes into battle.

* * * * *

“J.J. (New Brighton) sends us a case of a novel method to keep out would-be marauders from the garden.  A friend of his who has some expensive ferns planted in a rockery put up the notice, ’Beware of the Scolopendriums and Polypodiums’—­which, of course, are the Latin names of garden insects.”—­Pearson’s Weekly.

Clearly a case of nature mimicry.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  Self-Protection.

John Bull.  “I’ve invested A Mint of money in other lands, it’s time I put
something into my own.”]

* * * * *

Revivals and revisions.

“It” (as Mr. Gosse says at the beginning of his fascinating monograph on Swinburne, a work which we understand has just been crowned by the Band of Hope) it is now beyond doubt that Mr. H.B.  IRVING’S drastic way with Hamlet is to have a far-reaching effect on all revivals.  New authors can be acted more or less as they write, or as they happen to be stronger or weaker than their “producers”; but to be revived is henceforward to be revised, and fairly stringently too.