Last Saturday, when the newspapers generally were charged with such
topics as forecasts of the Anglo-Italian Agreement and General Franco's break-through to the coast, an impressive contents-bill caught my eye :
DEVON WOMAN PREDICTS WAR IN TWO YEARS
It did its work, in so far as it impelled me to the expenditure of three-halfpence, which is the strange sum at which the Western Morning News values itself. On the whole it was not a very dashing effort at vaticination. Two years is a long time ; I have heard war in not much over two months pre- dicted. But there are two points about this prediction. In the first place, its author was a Devon woman, and I have always held, for good reason, that Devon women surpass all others in wisdom as well as in every other laudable attribute ; in the second it was based on astrology, and if you see it in the stars it is so ; it may be added, thirdly, that it possesses the added virtue of discretion, for long before two years are up even its author will have forgotten all about it.
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