uscular arms.

"Bad news that about Mrs. Lummis," he said, looking towards the cottage on
the other side of the road.

"What is that?" said I. "Her son?" There had been no news of him for two
months.

"Yes, poor Jack. She's got news that he was killed near la Bassee in June.
Nice feller--and her only son."

Then, more cheerfully, he added, "Jim's coming home to-morrow. Going to get
his officer's rig out, you know, and have a rest--the first since he went
out a year ago."

"You'll be glad to see him," said I.

"Not half," said he with a vast smile.

ON RUMOUR

I was speaking the other day to a man of cautious mind on a subject of
current rumour. "Well," he said, "if I had been asked whether I believed
such evidence four months ago I should have said 'Certainly.' But after the
great Russian myth I believe nothing that I can't prove. I believed in that
army of ghosts that came from Archangel! There are people who say they
didn't believe in it. Some of them believe they didn't believe in it. But I
say defiantly that I did believe in it. And I say further that there was
never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more
convincing evidence. And it wasn't true.... Well, I find I'm a changed man.
I find I am no longer a believer: I am a doubter."

This experience, I suppose, is not uncommon. The man who believes as easily
to-day as he did six months ago is a man on whom lessons are thrown away.
We have lived in a world of gigantic whispers, and most of them have been
false whispers. Even the magic word "Official" leaves one cold. It is not
what I am "officially" told that interests me: it is what I am "officially"
not told that I want to know in order to arrive at the truth.

You remember that famous answer of the plaintiff in an action against a
London paper years ago. "What did you tell him?" "I told him to tell the
truth." "The whole truth?" "No, _selected truths_."

What we have to guard against in this matter of rumours is the natural
tendency to believe what we want to believe. Take that case of the reported
victory in Poland in November 1914. There is strong reason to believe that
a large part of Hindenburg's army narrowly escaped being encircled, that
had Rennenkampf come up to time the trick would have been done. But it
wasn't done. Yet nearly every correspondent in Petrograd sent the most
confident news of an overwhelming victory. The _Morning Post_ correspondent
spoke of it