During the first half of January the base censor's office alone handled more than 8,000 letters a day—two thousand a day increase over December, due, no doubt, to the thank-you letters which our dutiful soldier-men felt compelled to write in return for those bounteous Christmas boxes. In the spring, though more transports will be coming over, more men will be writing letters, but still the work will go on. The abuse of the letter-writing privilege by one man might mean the loss of many of his comrades, so the long and tough job of censoring must be "seen through."
So, you smarty with the private code to transmit all sorts of dope to the folks, have a care! No matter how the letters pile up, old Base Censor, Inc., is always on the job! Like the roulette wheel at Monte Carlo, he'll get you in the end, no matter how lucky and clever you think yourself. Or, as Indiana's favorite poet might put it,
"The censor-man 'ull git you ef you
don't
watch
out!"
MIRABELLE
One striking feature of the war is the number of women and girls engaged in various kinds of work back of the lines. The British Army has thousands of them doing clerical work or driving ambulances, while in the A.E.F. their activities so far have been limited to canteen work with the Red Cross or Y. M. C. A.
[Most of them are practical individuals] doing a lot of good, but occasionally one slips over imbued with the idea that soldiers are sort of overgrown bacteriological specimens to be studied and handled only with sterilized gloves.
Possibly one of the latter inspired a certain A.E.F. private to lapse into poetry after he had stowed her baggage away and heard her dissertation on what the camp needed. His verses were:
The ether ethered,
The cosmos coughed,
Mirabelle whispered—
The words were soft:
"I shall go," Mirabelle said—
And her voice, how it bled!—
"I shall go to be hurt
By the dead, dead, dead.
To be hurt, hurt, hurt"—
Oh, the sad, sweet mien,
And the dreepy droop
Of that all-nut bean!
"One must grow," Mirabelle wailed,
"And one grows by the knife.
I shall grow in my soul
In that awful strife.
Let me go, let me grow,"
Was the theme of her dirge;
"Let the sobbiest of sobs
Through my bosom surge."