he told me to keep in touch with him and not worry
about the War more than I could help, and I
mumbled something about it having been frightfully
interesting to meet him.

As I walked away from Markington my mind was
clamorous with confused ideas and phrases. It
seemed as if, until to-day, I had been viewing the War
through the loop-hole in a trench parapet. Now I felt
so much "in the know" that I wanted to stop strangers
in the street and ask them whether they realized that
we ought to state our War Aims. People ought to be
warned that there was (as I would have expressed it)
some dirty work going on behind their backs. I re-
membered how sceptical old Lord Asterisk had been
about the redemption of "gallant little Belgium" by
the Allies. And now Markington had gloomily in-
formed me that our Aims were essentially acquisitive,
what we were fighting for was the Mesopotamian Oil
Wells. A jolly fine swindle it would have been for
me, if I'd been killed in April for an Oil Well! But I
soon forgot that I'd been unaware of the existence
of the Oil Wells before Markington mentioned them,
and I conveniently assimilated them as part of my
evidential repertoire.

Readers of my pedestrian tale are perhaps won-
dering how soon I shall be returning to the temperate
influence of Aunt Evelyn. In her latest letter she
announced that a Zeppelin had dropped a bomb on
an orchard about six miles away; there had also been
an explosion at the Powder Mills at Dumbridge, but
no one had been hurt- Nevertheless Butley was too
buzzing and leisurely a background for my mercurial

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