LETTERS TO CHILDREN FROM THE TRENCHES. [1.1 , -as EDITOR OP
THE SPECTLT013.1 _ .a Sur,—Here is another letter from tine—
Tohn to NUB). phels very sad just now, as she will never see again her dear 1Truileaaos.—.: who was mentioned in the previous letter. He was at her hest Christmit party, and after romping and playing with the fifty or more kiddies he got up and told them that "the recollection of their happy, faces would encourage him whenever he was fighting, and that he would willingly give his all if he could prevent them from ever falling into "s hand if Prussian tyrants." He returned to the front the next day, and he Ind a brother-officer were recently shot while attending wounded men.
"20th March, 1916.
MY DEAR MUFFIE,—I am sending, addressed to Auntie Maggie, my watch, which she might have put to rights for me and return it, so that I may not in future do more than my own share of work through sot knowing the time. Of course, I am very prone to do that! Talking about shells—not oyster shells, because any noise annoys an oyster, but a noisy noise annoys an oyster most—and, besides, oyster shells require a knife to open them, whereas the kind of shell I mean opens itself—nor mussel shells, nor whelk shells, nor snails' buckles—but just SHELLS in big block capitals, the kind of SHELLS they put in guns in order to put out of them. Well, talking about guns—not shot-guns, nor spring-guns, nor air-guns, but Gulfs in big capital block letters—the kind of GUNS into which they put shells in order to put them out again. Well, as I was saying, talking of orals and snzu,s, perhaps you think a gun is a steel cylinder that fires a SHELL, and a shell is an iron eylinder full of explosive which occasionally bursts (but more often not, except when you're being strafed). That's just where you are wrong, because a oust is 8 DRAGON—in capitals. It has to be fed en shells and oil. But no sooner do they give it a shell to eat than they tickles hup hist:lards,' so that the shell won't lie on ms stomach, msd the DRAGON Vomits INA the SHELL or spits it out 80 very hard that it flies away for miles and miles. AND the DRAGON is very fierce, as is kept so hungry ; so, when he spits out the sums, he roars, and the bigger the nnstooss, and the larger the SHELL, the louder he roars ; and when he roars the houses shake and the earth quakes, and if you are very near you have to open your mouth or you get your eardrums injured. Of course, these GUN-DRAGONS grow and grow. Some of them that were quite tiny machine guns when the war started are now hoary-beaded old 15-inchers. Some of them are very short and stout, and spit the SHELL high into the air, and these are called HOWITZERS, but I don't know now-rr-zis. There are ever so many new little baby DIRAGONS being born every day in ENGLAND and SCOTLAND and sent ant here to roar and fret. Some of them just rumble and grumble, and the little ones they just bicker.
There is a GUN-DRAGON that throws out ars SHELLS at aeroplanes, said he is called ARCHIBALD, because ms name isn't Willie, I suppose Well, THESE here GUNS is like SERPINTS, BO THEY be. They won't eat nothink unless so be as it is livin'. So they feeds 'em on live SHELLS. There are two kinds of SHELLS THEY eat : SHRAPNEL smams and HIGH-EXPLOSIVE SHELLS. The former, when they burst, send out a e hower of iron bullets besides the fragments of the SHELL case. The latter would blow up anything—even a tire with a hole in it. Well, as I said, these SHELLS are alive. That is to say, just as a whelk shell aentains a whelk, and an oyster shell is the home of an oyster, and the mussel resides in a mussel shell, and the limpet in a limpet shell, and the hermit crab in anybody else's shell wot don't belong to hisself, but wot he 'ave pinched wen the tenant and occupier 'as been out a-airin' of 'is-self—just so I say does the SHELL the GUN fires contain a tenant, the GENT of the EXPLOSIVE. Of course, the mos isn't very happy at being hurled through space for so many miles where he isn't wanting to go ; and he is very anxious to get out and wreak his vengeance on mankind because they have locked him into his house by fixing a nose-cap on it. You would get dizzy yourself if you went ever so many hundreds of miles a minute thro' the air, whirling round all the time. So, if he is a strong geni, he gets so hot and angry that he bursts out of his house when the SHELL hits the ground, and he shrieks and roars as he gets free, and he lashes out and throws the pieces of his house all about, and hurts people. Sometimes the men who have locked him in his house arrange the nose-cap so that it will let him out just before the SHELL reaches the ground, and the same thing happens as before I Funny you didn't know that yourself, Isn't it ? I thought you and Teddy were rather authorities on DRAGONS Had PAERIE. Anyhow, you know it now, don't you 1—Yours affectionate UNCLE JOHN'.
Love to Teddy and Jean, too, and to the grown-ups."
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