The Brecon County Times Neath Gazette and General Advertiser for the Counties of Brecon Carmarthen Radnor Monmouth Glamorgan Cardigan Montgomery Hereford

I. THE RIGHT SORT. [BY LIEUT. J. B. MORTON.] You'll get into it, son." You bet I will." Everyone does. An' it's not a bad game. Why, blow me, you get your keep, board and lodgin'—what more do you want? Good deal more board than lodgin', but that don't do nobody any 'arm. Sleepin' in a natural way's good for a bloke. Never did 'old with feather beds and blinkin' draught-excusers—what d'you call 'em?-You know. After all, fresh air was put 'ere to be breathed wholesale, not taken in bloomin' little retail doses. Mark my words, it's a man's life, an' as for danger—see you here, when anyone starts zn in about danger—tell 'em its dangerous to run for a tram Camden Town way, case 'is bloomin' 'eart goes phut! Danger! It's dangerous to live for fear o' dyin'. What the blazes is life anyway without a bit o' sport. Leastways; that's 'ow I sees it." The youngster, who had come over with a new draft, was imbibing wisdom from a typical old soldier. Curly, as they called him, was renowned for his calm under all circumstances. Curly's friend, Tim, not so long since known to the residents of Putney and to fame as an always cheerful and tolerably efficient barber, added a word here and there. He had joined up early in the war, and felt himself to be quite a veteran cam- paigner, as indeed he was, for the war brings intensive culture to all who serve. So you just get it fixed in your brain- box," Tim was saying to the new arrival. That you're here to put all your grit into the job, and more. Just watch out what the rest of us do, and treat us all as pals. The more you hate doing a thing, the more it's up to you to laugh. Whatever you're told to do, you can take it from me there's a reason, and don't forget that men with red hats get orders, same as you, and per- haps don't like 'em, same as you-but they laugh, same as you've got to. Everybody ZD laughs out here. And there's always helpin' hands ready if you're in difficulties. Isn't there Curly ? Course there is. I've noticed 'em 'eaps of time after my jam." Y u and your jam Forget it, mate." Don't you wish I did, too? One would not, perhaps, imagine that all this conversation was going on within eighty yards of the German line. More- over, the speakers were being shelled unpleasantly. Presently a shell disturbed the parapet, dislodging sandbags and earth. Curly was tumbled to the ground, and got up cursing. The new arrival laughed, shaking the mud off his clothes. What the blazes is makin' you so merry? said Curly. We all laugh out 'ere," said the new arrival, winding a handkerchief round his linger. "Here let's look," said Tim. "Hit, aren't you ? No," said the youngster "Just grazed, like." A shell splinter had torn a bit of flesh out of the side of his little finger. Damned if you won't do," said Tim, admiringly. "Look 'ere," said Curly, you're the right stuff. Shake, mate." Feeling very proud of the honour, the youngster took the grimy hand of the veteran.

VILLAGE THUMBNAILS. [BY E. W. R.] I.-Pluck. The squire's lady gave me an old-time greeting. She asked me the old, old question How long will the war last? and I countered it with You are anxious about the boy? But she wasn't. Proudly she answered "Oh, he's all right; had his horse shot dead twice and still in the thick of it. It's Lilian who worries me." What about Lilian? She's a V.A.D. gone into a hospital and is scrubbing floors. Vows she'll do six months of it; and she might have gone to Australia for a trip. She has scrubbed floors for two months it will ruin her hands and I've told her so." And what did Lilian say ? She wrote me that it has ruined her hands already, that she doesn't care a rap, and that she is going on with it." II.-Contentment. The cough of an engine floated through the hawthorns. I found it in a rick yard. Such a busy scene. Three Land Lassies on a forty-ton hayrick pitching forks full of hay from one to the other, and the third one feeding it down to a baling machine driven by the engine. A fourth guiding the baling wire. Four men in khaki load- ing the bales on lorries. It looked hot work in the blazing sun- shine. The dust of the hay settled on everything. Sun's heat and dust, and the hot cough of the engine and the rumble of the baling press. "Disagreeable job, ladies? I said. Not bad," one laughed. Dust rather trying, isn't it? It all washes off." Must make you very tired." It does; but (singing) When you come to the end of a perfect, day "—a pause, and then, roguishly, Such sleep."

BY THE WAY. I Random Jottings about Men and Things. (The peace offensive may The Next now begin-a peace offensive Move. and no peace offers.-Berlin Kreuzzeitung.") For peace they now with tricks contend, But from this view we shall not cease— Their peace offensive for its end Has but a most offensive peace. —M. S., in ithe Daily Chronicle." A Lambeth woman recently Lost and went to an East End hospital Found. to see a wounded soldier friend. At one end of the ward she noticed a soldier seated in a chair who jerked his head whenever she looked that way. The visitor thought the man was suffer- ing from some form of shell shock, and took no further notice. A little later, however, she was informed by a nurse that the man wished to see her, and she then discovered that he was her brother who was posted as miss- ing in 1915 and, after a long silence, was pre- sumed dead. The soldier in question, who was one of the prisoners recently exchanged, has lost both arms and also his power of speech. When the boy is home on A Topic to leave do not worry him with Avoid. questions about the war. He will talk of it if he wants to, but it is more than probable that the war is the last topic he will want to talk about. A machine-gunner visited his home in London last Christmas, and all the people could get out of him was, Let the war alone while I'm here. It's warm enough out there, I can tell you." They thought it churlish of him at the time, and now they are proud of his saying, for the gunner has just won the V.C. for bravery in the warm corner that requires a very cool head. He went for an enemy trench single handed, and captured a whole machine-gun crew with !the gun complete. Our contributor Sentinel Little has something to say on Page Norway's 1 about Norway's fears and Fears. tremblings at the bare idea of a German win. Norway has suffered heavily already by the barbaric ways of the Hun, although, as a neutral, she should have been immune from war losses. Since the beginning of the conflict 769 Nor- wegian vessels have been lost through the war, amounting on the aggregate to a gross tonnage of 1,127,310, while, from the same causes, 968 Norwegian sailors have lost their lives. All this wanton destruction and murder in the vain hope that when peace comes the German merchant vessels may have a clear run of the seas. But there will have to be a reckoning first, and in that reckoning the crimes of Germany against a helpless people will not be lightly dismissed. A letter from Mr. J. H. Defaming Thomas, M.P., Labour Mem- Public Men. her for Derby, on a recent law action, contains a passage worth quoting :— "At this great crisis our people ought to be protected in their grief and anxiety from being told by one who, as a British M.P., should dis- play some .sense of responsibility, that men entrusted with the great duties of statesman- ship are corrupt and traitors. Reckless asser- tions of this kind, entirely unsupported by evidence, and defaming men and women alive and dead, may well have a disturbing effect upon a public opinion already racked with anxiety and tense with emotion." The italics are ours. Fair-minded men and women knÇJw how to treat slanderous state- ments on public men that are made reck- lessly and without any evidence to support them. Too o'ften it is said that we Cuilty I make over much fuss about stories of German frightful- ness and stories of German cruelty to the wounded and to prisoners of war. War is war," say some heartless people and they suggest that we should take it as it comes— a horribly callous acquiescence in the brutalities of the Hun. One is glad to find that at last there is at least one voice in Germany courageously raised on the side of humanity-that of Maximilian Harden, the Socialist leader. Expressing himself in a German periodical he says :— "He who ill-treats an unarmed man, a prisoner, or anyone suffering bodily pain, or insults and abuses him, is not worthy of the name of mar he is guilty of the great sin which shall never be forgiven in time or place. Shall we not still in the storm, the earthquake, and shame of this cruel time endeavour to keep the standard of clean manhood? There is only one answer to this lone German voice's interrogation, and it is a crushing denunciation of his fellow-countrymen. They are—judged by his testing query—unclean. It is betraying no secret to Five Civilians say that there are somewhere to One Soldier. between 4,000,000 and 6,000,000 men in our fighting forces, leaving 40,000,000 of us more or less to carry on in civilian life. It would, be a fair assump- tion, therefore, that five civilians stand be- hind one soldier. Unfortunately, it is the sol- dier who suffers if the civilians slacken the pace, whether with munitions or money. But munitions can always be speeded up if the money is forthcoming. It is the man with the money who will be chiefly to blame if things go wrong—and equally the man with the little money as with the big money. If one person out of five, whether from apathy or selfish- ness, holds back mone4 which could be put in War Savings Certificates he is endangering 9 11 1 some soldier indirectly. That is a point not always appreciated, or there would be an enor- mous accession to the stream of investments which patriotic and far-seeing people are con- tributing towards victory. Fifteen shillings and sixpence is little, it is a prosaic business buying a War Savings Certificate at a Post Office-yet it may save a man's life.

WHERE THE BACON COMES FROM. AMERICAN MOTHER: What? Nobody wants any more? It's very nice bacon. YOUNG AMERICA: But, mummy, if we eat more than our ration, there will be less for the children over there-in England. AMERICAN FATHER (proudly): Some Boy! [The Citizens of the United States rich and poor, old and young, have voluntarily tightened their belts in order that more food may be shipped to England. See article on Page 1.] -o-

1 1 I THE CALL FOB SELF SACRIFICE. | (yy 4 If we are to win this war it will be only because lAj every man, woman, and child charges himself daily M W and hourly with the text: Does this or that contribute W (0) to win the war ?' This is not the Gospel of Gloom it (0) i the Gospel of the full health, spirit, and strength of our W people in maintaining the last ounce of production and W vyJ the last atom of economy. W) Aside from the prime necessity of protecting our AA M independence and our institutions, there is but one possible Xa W benefit from the war, and that is the stimulation of self- Vy .h\ sacrifice in the people—the lifting of its ideals, and the fm fa diversion of its peace tendencies because of the purely W material things in life to the strengthening of its higher W (§) purpose." (uj /M —MR. HOOVER, U.S.A. FOOD CONTROLLER. A\ I 1

..0\. I 0.: » 11 MA'MSELLE AND THE FARRIER. ——U— [British Official. A charming picture of a French girl (doing war work as a cow-minder) enjoying a parley-voo with a Sergeant Farrier.

THE WOMAN'S PART. I Concerning the House in Hot Weather. [By MARGARET OSBORNE.] English houses are built and furnished for comfort in cold weather, and we show very little ingenuity in making them comfortable in the dog days. Light and air are good things, but the woman whose one idea of cool- ing a house is to let out the fires and open the windows will find the perfect June the poet praises a very trying month, and her hus- band and household will be inclined to echo the angry appeal of the Oxford professor— Shut the windows None of your beastly ventilators The Small Villa's Disadvantages. People with large houses manage well enough. If they have several sitting-rooms they can arrange to use those on which the sun is not shining at the moment they need not sleep in attics just under a hot roof they probably have outside blinds which prevent the sun shining on window glass till the people inside feel as though they were sitting in Nebuchadnezzar's seven-times-heated furnace. But the occupant of a small villa is in different case. She cannot go far from the hot roof without coming near the hot kitchen fire her family probably requires all the houseroom there is, her Venetian blinds are inside the rooms instead of in their proper place—outside, shielding the window and her dark curtains have been put away at the spring cleaning, lest the summer sun should fade them. She cannot, for fear of burglars, leave doors and windows open at night to cool the ground floor of the house, and her ideas of hot weather food stop at cold meat and salad —rationed meat and very dear lettuces. Cold Meals Help. There is no need to despair, even of the little house. Most villas have two sitting- rooms with different aspects, and if the sacred drawing-room looks north or west it should be possible to use it for breakfast, letting the master of the house start for his business cool and comfortable. If there is no table in the drawing-room large enough for the whole party breakfast can be in two relays. The children's porridge can be cold, made into a mould like a blancmange overnight, and the bacon can be boiled and eaten cold with sliced beetroot or cold potato salad. But if the breakfast-room is really cool the family will probably eat its usual hot breakfast without a murmur. One Cool Room. When the family has dispersed, the house, if left to itself, will go on getting hotter and hotter. One room must be made cool or kept cool. If you have outside blinds draw them and shut the windows while the sun is full on them, letting in the light and breeze when the sun has moved on. If you have no outside blinds and no fittings for them you may shield an ordinary sash window in this way. Have a strip of some thick cotton material the width of your window and rather longer than the window is high. Knock two large-headed nails in the top outside corners of your win- dow frame. When you want a sun-blind open your window at the top and hang your strip of cotton stuff on the nails by means of two button holes in the extreme ends of its top hem. Then drop it down outside the window and shut the top sash. Shut the bottom sash down on the bottom edge of the improvised blind, and air the room by leaving the door open towards the cool side of the house. If you have green roller blinds fixed in the ordi- nary way (most people had Zepp-blinds) you can let them down outside the window instead of inside, but they are likely to be spoiled by the first thunder shower. The Use of a Punkah. Now suppose the night-nursery is so hot that you hesitate to put the baby to bed, or suppose you have an invalid in a hot airless bedroom. You should have a punkah-blind ready for this emergency. Take a piece of Turkish towelling the width of your window and about half a yard long, run a thin lath through a hem at the top of this and fix two screw-eyes in the ends of the lath. You can then hang your blind (having previously damped it) on two nails driven into the lower edge of the bottom sash of the window -iiiside this time. The dampness evaporat- ing from the blind will soon cool the room as the air comes through it from the open window. And the punkah does not look untidy, and is easily taken down and rolled up to wait for the next hot day.

CUT THIS OUT. MISCELLANEOUS RECIPES. tcttUCI) Soup.INGREDIENTS.-The outside leaves of 2 or 3 lettuces; 1 pint vegetable stock; 2 leeks; 3 spring onions; oz. mar- garine or bacon fat; 1 oz. flour; i pint hot skimmed milk; pepper; salt. METHOD.—Shred the lettuce leaves, onions and leeks finely, and add to the stock, which should have been previously heated. Simmer till the vegetables are soft, adding more stock or water if necessary. Rub through a coarse sieve, ani return to the pan. Moisten the flour to a soft paste, and stir into the soup. Con- tinue to stir till the eoup thickens and boils. Season, add the margarine and hot milk, and cook for two minutes longer. This is a good way of using lettuces that are too old for salad. Potato Salad Dress ing.-INGRFDIE N TS.- 2 tablespoons boiled potato; 4 tablespoons salad oil; 2 tablespoons vinegar; saltspoon each of sugar, pepper, made mustard; 1 teaspoon sweetened condensed milk. METHOD.—Mash the potato very smoothly, and add the dry ingredients and milk. Work in the oil and vinegar a little at a time, first of oil and then of vinegar. If you have vinegar from pickles or tarragon, use one tablespoon of this with the plain vinegar. Salad dressing tlius made will keep for a week. Jellied Meat Fingers.—INGREDIENTS.— £ lb. any cooked meat, game, rabbit, or fish (or two hard boiled eggs and a teaoupful cooked green peas); -1 pint well-flavoured gravy; oz. gelatine; 2 tomatoes; 2 inches cucumber; 2 tablcspoonfuk boiled rice or macaroni; ] table- spoonful each chopped parsley and chopped cooked onion; seasoning; lettuce. METHOD.—Mince the meat, or whatever vou may be using, mix it with the rice, skinned, chopped tomatoes and cucumber, the parsley and onion. Siir these into the gravy in which the gelatine has been dissolved. Mix well, and season rather highly, as the mixture is to be eaten cold. Turn it into a flat tin that has been rinsed with cold water, so that it makes a layer about one inch thick. Leave till cold and set. Cut into fingcrshapecl blocks, and serve with any nice salad. j Pastry without Fat.—INGREDIENTS.—1 egg; 1 lb. flour; salt; a little milk. METHOD.—Sift the flour on to a pastry-board. Make a Ttole in the top of the heap and break in t.he ess. If you think Ihe egg mnv not be fresh, break it into a cup, but do not bent it. Mix gradually into a stiff paste, using a little [Continued at foot of next column.']

FOOD TOPICS. Items About Rationing and Production. [BY SMALLHOLDER."] Ration Books. It will be a comfort to have ration books instead of a collection of miscellaneous cards that no woman can possibly keep flat, clean, and respectable. These books are small enough to slip into an ordinarv envelope. They have coupon-leaves for sugar, fats, meat, and lard, coloured respectively buff, blue, red, and brown—with a spare leaf for any other foodstuff that may be rationed. You will probably think them rather pretty. But, after all. the great thing is to handle your ration book as seldom as possible, and what every wise woman will do with the buff, blue, and brown leaves is to let her tradesman tear them out and keep them-if those trades- men will kindly oblige. She might even do the same with the red meat-leaves, only in that case she would have no coupons for public meals, or poultry or bacon or meat pies, or any of those miscellaneous dainties in the way of meat that a butcher does not sell. However, the book should last for sixteen weeks all right, if kept in its envelope. One cannot exct to see covers provided in these days of laoour shortage. What Rationing Has Done. What every housewife knows, if she once had to struggle through days of queues and disappointment, is that rationing has made things far easier for her. It has its unavoid- able little worries, but a wise woman takes the lean with the fat, so to speak, and does not forget that, in cheerfully submitting to these national arrangements, she is doing her bit to win the war. Besides, the food posi- tion goes on improving. There is better meat now, and we are promised plenty of tea at last, together with what is equally welcome, a ration of lard. It is good to see the many signs of gratitude to Lord Rhondda. The occasional grumblers do not count. It is nothing less than wonderful, in fact, that after four years of war, and in face of a world shortage from which there will be no escape till the war is over, our tight little island should still have food enough for its dense population in spite of all the sub- marine sinkings. How has it been managed ? Ah, that is a very big story-almost as big as the story of England's creation of a great Army. Nor is it a story of the past the immense labour of organisation goes on hour by hour, never ceasing and ever changing. About the Fruit Harvest. Take the case of this year's fruit. Great preparations were made for the fruit harvest, and the fair control of prices and distri- bution in connection with it; but we see already that this harvest will be disappoint- ing, though the grain crops promise to be better than ever. The Food Ministry has had to announce that gooseberries will be taken over for the manufacture of jam, most of which will be needed by our fighting men and this may have to be done with other kinds of fruit as they ripen. Well, it cannot be helped, and nobody will grudge the sacrifice to those who are saving us from the Huns. As far as may be possible, however, the Ministry will release a share of the fruit crops from time to time, and the Food Production Department will see that there is labour available for handling them. If we have to consume our fruit mainly in the form of jam, instead of in quite so many pies and puddings, that will be because jam-making secures us better against loss and waste than the distribution and sale of fresh fruit could do. Milk Prices. The increased price of milk is more impor- tant but, in the opinion of those who should know, there would have been very little milk next winter if the price had not been advanced now. Farmers, it appears to be certain, were not finding it worth while to maintain their stocks of milking cows so that it comes to this-we have to decide whether it is better to pay more for our milk or to have less milk than we need. When the Food Controller has to deal with pro- ducers, he can only act upon the principle that production must be made worth while and in war-time, when everything is dearer to the farmer as it is to all the rest of us. that principle means increased remunera- tion. As the French say, if you want omelettes you must break eggs. Village Pig Clubs. In the Daily Mail the other day there was a delightful little sketch of a village meeting—~ of a type that is becoming common just now all over Englancl-the meeting to a form a village pig club. The writer, Mr. G. H. Hollingworth, pictured thirty or forty agri- cultural labourers seated at the long desks of the village school to hear all about it from the organiser of the county committee. The expert tells of the necessity for raising at home every ounce of food we can, and advises every man to keep a pig as a precaution against meat shortage in the winter. Every man who raises pigs can have the first pig for his own use in addition to his prescribed meat ration. Then the practical touch comes in- the labourers themselves introduce it— "What about the meal?" The organiser's answer is that cottagers as well as farmers have a claim on the supply of feeding stuffs available, and he points out that the main object of the club is co-operation for the purchase of feeding stuffs in bulk for distri- bution among the members. The idea of mutual insurance is next introduced, and when the men hear that by paying a premium of ls. 6d. per head on their store pigs, as members of the club, the pigs are insured up to four-fifths of their assessed value from the time they are eight weeks old until they are killed, they look at each other, nod their heads, and mentally agree that there is some-* thing in a pig club after all.

(Continued from last column.) milk at a time, and working from the edge of the ring of flour into the centre. Roll out into a thin sheet, and use to cover pies or make open tarts, baking from 20 to 25 minutes in a moderate oven. This is not a "war-pastry," but is always much used in Italy. White Stew.—INGREDIENTS.—1 rasher of bacon for each person; pint milk; 1 onion; a few new potatoes; 1 cup raw peas or beans; 1 heaped tablespoon flour; J pint water; seasonings. METHOD.—Peel the onion, stick it with two cloves, and keep it whole. Scrape the potatoes and cut in half, unless very small. Shell the peas or string and slice the beans. Place all in a stew-pan with the milk and water and the bacon, season with pepper and salt, and bring to the boil, then simmer gently until the vegetables are tender. Strain off the liquid, and heat up in another saucepan with the flour blended with a little cold water; boil this gently for ten minutes to cook the flour, heat up all the vegetables and bacon in this, and serve in a deep dish with the bacon placed on top and a few small sippets of toast around