thout his royal trappings to a
supper of sausage and potatoes, while his wife sits by and darns his
stockings and the baby begins to cry in its cot? So thought I, and
resolved to continue my career of acting, though I acknowledged that
some day, perhaps, in the very distant future, retirement might have its
attractions.

All this was before the War broke out. When that happened I, like the
rest, was seized and thrust into a uniform and made to remember my drill
and was presented with a rifle and a bayonet. Finally, with my regiment
I was marched off to the Front in France, where I still linger in daily
expectation of death. Dreadful things have I seen, men blown into
nothingness by shells, men pierced through and through by the steel,
women murdered and worse than murdered, and children crushed under
fallen walls--sights I cannot bear to think of, though they force
themselves upon me and murder sleep. I was, perhaps, unduly contemptuous
of real life, but now I abhor it and try in vain to put it away from me.
I desire with a full-hearted longing to return to that life of
imagination where the most dreadful bloodshed ends at about eleven
o'clock every evening, without leaving any impression on those who take
part. Yes, give me again the life of the theatre and remove far away
this brutal scenery of trenches and shells and bombs and quick-firers
and men summoned from peace and ease to cut one another's throats
because a histrion KAISER has so willed it and none of his subjects
dared to say him nay. To get away from this and never to return to it I
would willingly consent to play the _First Murderer_ in _Macbeth_ for
the remainder of my life. It would be an innocent and an honourable
occupation compared with what I am forced day by day and night by night
to endure.

Yours, in respectful despair, WOLFGANG OFFENMAUL.

* * * * *

[Illustration: ANOTHER CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.

Mr. McKenna. "PREMIUM BONDS TO HELP TO WIN THE WAR! OH, MY DEAR FRIENDS!
THINK OF OUR MORAL PRINCIPLES!"]

* * * * *

THE WATCH DOGS.

XXXVI.

My dear Charles,--I am afraid you'll be worrying about me again,
wondering why I'm lying doggo, what mischief I'm up to, or whether
anything has happened to me. Something has happened, but I'm not quite
sure myself what it is. Anyhow, I'll tell you all I know. It wasn't in
the _Gazette_ proper; it was in the "Memoranda." It referred to a Sec