One of the distressing war-pictures that rises from time to
time before my eyes is of thousands of people, male and female, young and old, sitting impotently any evening between seven o'clock and midnight, with a telephone receiver glued to their ear, trying to get " trunks." They never get it—if my own experience is any criterion. Five times did I try one evening this week, holding on for four or five minutes at a time. The ringing-signal functioned to perfection, and to precisely no purpose at all, for no human voice ever responded. This, I suppose, is the effect of the shilling call with a short staff. The cheap call is admirabk, but what its restoration in present conditions means appar- ently is that whereas till lately you could always get a call if you were ready to pay a half-crown fee, or whatever the day- time fee might be, now you couldn't get one for a £5 fee, for there is no means whatever of making the operator answer. I should mention that I am speaking only of calls from London.
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