would it be if I were to
go down and see Grey, or one of them, and to talk to him like a
father?"

"Well, perhaps it might be advisable to make a guarded suggestion to
them on the subject. Give my compliments to ----" But he was gone.

He returned in about half an hour. "I've been down to the Foreign
Office, sir, and as you might have expected, they haven't done a
blooming thing. What those 'dips' think they're paid for always beats
me! However, I've got them to promise to cable out to their
ambassadors and consuls and bottle-washers in Scandinavia to keep
their wits about them. I offered to draft the wires for them; but they
seemed to think that they could do it themselves, and I daresay
they'll manage all right now that I've told them exactly what they
are to say. I really do not know that we can do anything more about it
this evening," he added doubtfully, and with a worried, far-away look
on his face. Good heavens, he was never going to think of something
else! He took himself off, however, still evidently dissatisfied and
communing with himself.

Next forenoon "Z" came into my room in a hurry. "I've been hearing
about the caterpillars, sir," he exclaimed joyously.

"The caterpillars?"

"Oh, not crawly things like one finds in one's salad, sir. The ones
the Admiralty are making[5]--armoured motor contrivances, with great
big feet that will go across country and jump canals, and go bang
through Boche trenches and barbed wire as if they weren't there.
They'll be perfectly splendid--full of platoons and bombs and machine
guns, and all the rest of it. I _will_ say this for Winston and those
mariners across Whitehall, when they get an idea they carry it out and
do not bother whether the thing'll be any use or can be made at
all--care no more for the Treasury than if it was so much dirt, and
quite right too! Just what it is. But when they've got their
caterpillars made, they won't know what to do with them any more than
the Babes in the Wood. Then we'll collar them; but in the meantime I
might be able to give them some hints, so, if you'll let me, I'll go
across and----"

[Footnote 5: The first I heard of the Tanks, which
made so dramatic a debut near the Somme a year and
a half later.]

"Yes, yes; but just one moment. How about the poison?"

"The poison, sir? What poi--oh, that stuff. Didn't I tell you, sir? It
isn't poison at all. You see, sir, it's thi