all parts
of the Empire. It is the proud boast of this great journal that to
whatever far away, outlandish part of the Empire you may go, you will
always find a correspondent of the Times looking for something to do.
It is said that the present proprietor has laid it down as his maxim,
"I don't want men who think; I want men who know." The arrangements for
thinking are made separately.

Incidentally I may say that I had personal opportunities while I was
in England of realising that the reputation of the Times staff for the
possession of information is well founded. Dining one night with some
members of the staff, I happened to mention Saskatchewan. One of the
editors at the other end of the table looked up at the mention of the
name. "Saskatchewan," he said, "ah, yes; that's not far from Alberta, is
it?" and then turned quietly to his food again. When I remind the reader
that Saskatchewan is only half an inch from Alberta he may judge of the
nicety of the knowledge involved. Having all this in mind, I recast the
editorial and sent it to the London Times as follows:

"The news that the Sultan of Kowfat has thrown away his suspenders
renders it of interest to indicate the exact spot where he has thrown
them. (See map). Kowfat, lying as the reader knows, on the Kowfat River,
occupies the hinterland between the back end of south-west Somaliland
and the east, that is to say, the west, bank of Lake P'schu. It thus
forms an enclave between the Dog Men of Darfur and the Negritos of
T'chk. The inhabitants of Kowfat are a coloured race three quarters
negroid and more than three quarters tabloid.

"As a solution of the present difficulty, the first thing required
in our opinion is to send out a boundary commission to delineate more
exactly still just where Kowfat is. After that an ethnographical survey
might be completed."

It was a matter not only of concern but of surprise to me that not one
of the three contributions recited above was accepted by the English
Press. The Morning Post complained that my editorial was not firm enough
in tone, the Guardian that it was not humane enough, the Times that
I had left out the latitude and longitude always expected by their
readers. I thought it not worth while to bother to revise the articles
as I had meantime conceived the idea that the same material might be
used in the most delightfully amusing way as the basis of a poem far
Punch. Everybody knows the kind of verses that are con