"By Regulation 35B of the Defence of the Realm Regulations, it is an offence for any person having found any bomb, or projectile, or any fragment thereof, or any document, map, &c., which may have been discharged, dropped, &c., from any hostile aircraft, to forthwith communicate the fact to a Military Post or to a Police Constable in the neighbourhood."—Scotsman.
Why this mistrust of Scottish policemen?
EARLIER FOOD PROBLEMS.
Peace, I remember, had her alimentary perplexities not much less renowned than war. At any rate I can think of two.
The first was some years ago, in Yorkshire, on one of those sultry and stifling days of August which in winter, or even in such a March as we have been suffering, one can view as something more desirable than rubies, but which in actual fact are depressing, enervating, and the mother of moodiness and fatigue. We had left Chop Yat early in the morning after a night of excessive heat in beds of excessive featheriness and were walking towards Helmsley by way of Rievaulx, all unconcerned as to lunch by the way, because the ordnance map marked with such cordial legibility an inn on the road at a reasonable distance. Moreover, was not Yorkshire made up of hospitable ridings, and had we not, on the previous day, found lunch in this cottage and tea in that, with no trouble at all, to say nothing of the terrific spread confronting us at Chop Yat? Why then carry anything?
But we soon began to regret the absence of sustenance, for this kind of weather makes for extreme lassitude shot through with rattiness, and under its influence nourishment dies in one with painful celerity.
The blessed word "inn" was however on the ordnance map, and since it was the one-inch scale that cannot lie we braced ourselves, mended and remended our tempers, and plodded on. The dales no doubt are gorgeous places, but under this grey humid sky anyone who wanted it could have had my share of Billsdale (as I believe it was). Scenery had become an outrage. There was no joy, no beauty; nothing was worth living for but that inn. As we laboured forward we cheered each other by word-pictures of its parlour, its larder and its cellar. A pork-pie ("porch-peen" I fancy the Yorkshiremen call it) would probably be there. Eggs, of course. A ham, surely. Bacon, no doubt. Yellow butter, crusty new bread, and beer. Indeed, let the rest go, so long as there was beer. But beer, of course, was beyond any question; an inn without beer was unthinkable.