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Sir, This letter is intended for your benefit, and, that being so, I ought not, perhaps, to write it. However, you will never receive it—you are too well guarded for that, and I haven't the least doubt that everything calculated to upset your preconceived opinions and to set up the truth in their place will be kept away from you with the utmost rigour. My conscience is therefore clear; I run no risk of doing good to the alien arch-enemy, and can freely write this letter to relieve my own feelings. And even if by some outside chance it should come before your august eyes and penetrate into your heroic mind it would merely make you angry and thus disturb such judgment as is left to you after ten months of war.

In the first place I strongly advise you not to believe implicitly every rumour that may come to you as to the attitude of the British people in regard to this War. We are a peaceable folk and we don't enjoy being at war—that much may readily be granted. But we realise that it is our duty, being in this quarrel, so to bear it that the opposer (yourself) may beware of us. We rejoice certainly in the high courage and gallant bearing of our troops and we rejoice equally in the unquenchable humour and cheerfulness with which they support death and wounds and suffering. It is our business as a nation to see to it that they shall not have fought in vain and that the great cause of liberty shall have been maintained unimpaired against your brutal assaults. This duty, hard and painful as it is, we are firmly determined to carry through, whatever the cost may be to us.

But you may answer that you read occasional numbers of The Daily Gloom, and that you gather from these a very different impression. The Daily Gloom has repeatedly declared and keeps on declaring that our people have hardly realised that a war is going on. We are, it appears, sunk in sloth, and our young men, far from having made an unparalleled effort, are, most of them, waiting timidly at home until they shall be fetched and compelled to don khaki and go into the trenches. They are, in fact, slackers and shirkers, and it is useless for the recruiting-sergeants to din their duty into their ears, for they will only yield to compulsion and not to persuasion. As for the working men, who are the backbone of the nation, they all prefer drink and holidays to work, and they have a special dislike for the making of munitions. They must be nagged and ragged into doing what they ought to do. The inhabitants of England generally, not having seen their cathedrals and their homes destroyed by big guns, are by no means sufficiently Cimmerian to please the critic. In one column they are told to change their minds and lengthen their faces and to take example by the Germans, who in every department of life—at least, so I infer—show a discipline and a despondency worthy both of the highest praise and of our slavish imitation. Yet in another column of the same organ some neutral observer assures us that the German people, having been hypnotised by the lies they have learnt to believe, are serenely happy and quite confident; that they do not despond at all, that their food is ample and that their Professors still discourse on the mild virtues of Germany and the intolerable wickedness of other nations. What are we to believe?

Well, the fact is, of course, that our beloved Daily Gloom does not really want us to despair quite so despairingly as the tone of its articles might imply. It has a policy to promote, and it thinks that unless a certain object is at once secured we shall all go to ruin. And so it writes jeremiads and summons to its aid Bishops and Archdeacons and University dons and angry puzzled patriots. As to the merits of that policy I say nothing here. What I wish to make clear to you is that this attitude of despondency is put on. We do realise the seriousness of the struggle and the strength of our foe as well as his murderous lack of scruple, and while we are not entirely overwhelmed and crushed by the prospect we are still sternly determined to do all that lies in our power to crush you and to overwhelm your cause.

Yours faithfully, John Brown.

Girls are now employed at some of the "Tube" stations to punch the tickets. A susceptible Shakspearean, on encountering one, was heard to murmur:―

Under the heading, "Winston enjoys the Change," The Daily Sketch recently had a picture of Mr. Churchill riding in the Row, to which was appended the momentous information that "he wore his favourite hat." With commendable reticence it made no attempt to explain why he had not been able to get it on before.