nient to lump the whole heavenly
host which at present orders our goings and shapes our ends. It
includes--

(1) The War Office;

(2) The Treasury;

(3) The Army Ordnance Office;

(4) Our Divisional Office;

--and other more local and immediate homes of mystery.

The Olympus which controls the destinies of "K(1)" differs in many
respects from the Olympus of antiquity, but its celestial inhabitants
appear to have at least two points in common with the original
body--namely, a childish delight in upsetting one another's
arrangements, and an untimely sense of humour when dealing with
mortals.

So far as our researches have gone, we have been able to classify
Olympus, roughly, into three departments--

(1) Round Game Department (including Dockets, Indents, and all
official correspondence).

(2) Fairy Godmother Department.

(3) Practical Joke Department.

The outstanding feature of the Round Game Department is its craving
for irrelevant information and its passion for detail. "Open your
hearts to us," say the officials of the Department; "unburden your
souls; keep nothing from us--and you will find us most accommodating.
But stand on your dignity; decline to particularise; hold back one
irrelevant detail--and it will go hard with you! Listen, and we
will explain the rules of the game. Think of something you want
immediately--say the command of a brigade, or a couple of washers for
the lock of a machine-gun--and apply to us. The application must be
made in writing, upon the Army Form provided for the purpose, and in
triplicate. _And_--you must put in all the details you can possibly
think of."

For instance, in the case of the machine-gun washers--by the way, in
applying for them, you must call them _Gun, Machine, Light Vickers,
Washers for lock of, two_. That is the way we always talk at the
Ordnance Office. An Ordnance officer refers to his wife's mother as
_Law, Mother-in-, one_--you should state when the old washers were
lost, and by whom; also why they were lost, and where they are now.
Then write a short history of the machine-gun from which they were
lost, giving date and place of birth, together with, a statement of
the exact number of rounds which it has fired--a machine-gun fires
about five hundred rounds a minute--adding the name and military
record of the pack-animal which usually carries it. When you have
filled up this document you forward it to the proper quarter and await
results.

The gam