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

(1) THE FIELD OF FIRE. [BY LIEUT. J. B. MORTON.] You can't come 'ere." Who said? I said." "Who are you?" Never you mind who I am. You can't come 'ere." "I never did mind who you were, an' I can come 'ere." Get along." Why can't I, any way? Anyone with 'alf a black eye could see as the bay was crammed full fit to bust already. Must 'ave elbow-room." Well, you can't fire proper from the other. You can see all over the ground 'ere." That's why I'm 'ere." An' that's why I'm comin', see? Let 'im come, Dick." "What! an' spoil sport. Not me. Don't get round me that way, son." Tom went round the traverse to his own bay, disconcerted. The Germans were shelling the sector heavily, and everyone felt that something would happen soon. Tom had suddenly discovered, while rest- ing on his spade, that there was a better field of fire from the next bay. But Dick took his fighting very seriously at times, and liked plenty of room. We couldn't have had another 'ere," he said, when Tom had gone; not even old Tom. He's never 'appy unless he can see to fire all over the Western Front." During the argument the shells had been falling pretty close, and the men had their work cut out to build the parapet up. Every now and then a fresh portion was blown in. But they stuck to the work patiently, chaffing each other and humming their songs. Presently an officer came down the trench. He held a muddy spade in his hand, and his tunic was ripped to ribbons down one side. Hurry up and get that built up," he said; we shall most likely have to stand- to in a little while. They're up to some- thing over there." The work was almost finished, when it was all undone again. Dick's firestep was carried away. He stood back and looked at it ruefully. If they was to come now I couldn't even get a shot at 'em," he said, and started to dig feverishly. He was relieved by another man. Putting his spade down, he walked round the traverse into the next bay. Tom was hard at work. Tom, old man he began. Yes." I didn't kind o' mean it nasty just now." "Well?" Fact is—I—I wonder if you've got any room 'ere. My blinkin' firestep is done in. They might come any second. I'll 'ave to find a place somewhere." That's your look-out, mate." Can't I ? Not if the moon turns pink." II Not for a bit 1 Not a second." Stand-to! Fetch your rifle, mate," said Tom, relenting. "You mean it? Course I do. Get a move on." Dick dashed back to his own bay, and returned with his rifle. He mounted a firestep by the side of Tom. Tom, I'm real grateful. Any time you want a place along o' me The remainder of the sentence was drowned in a rending explosion. The two men stood up side by side, gripping their rifles, eyes intent on No- Man's-Land, forgetting everything except that the Germans were coming, and that they were quite ready for them.

(2) M.M. [FROM A CORRESPONDENT.] Agnes was puzzled. She went about her work with brows knit, and often paused to think. These abbreviations were too much for her. She must consult the kitchen oracle. "I say, Mrs. Mann," she said, what does hem hem mean? Hem hem'?" replied the charlady. Oh, that's the noise nobs makes when they got a cawf." Agnes shook her head. I don't think that can be it. You wouldn't exactly say anybody 'ad got the hem hem, would you?" You might," answered Mrs. Mann. Mann oft enough comes 'ome and says the foreman 'as been comin' the haw1 haw, meanin' 'e's bin a bit 'aughty like." But this is hem hem," persisted Agnes. "The letter hem twice over." Oh, I se-e," said Mrs. Mann. That's Mothers' Meetin'. But that don't interest you, does it, Agnes? I should^ say not," with emphasis, see'n I am t not so much as married yet. But this ain't Mothers' Meetin'. It's my Alf as got it. I 'ad a letter from 'im this morning, and 'o says, Just -a line to let you know I am in the pink, and 'ave got the hem hem, so no more at present.' 'E must mean a cawf," said Mrs. Mann placidly. An' I'm sure I don't wonder, poor boys, seein' all they as to put up with, mud an' what not. P'raps it's a new way of saying' 'e's fed up like." But 'e says e's in the pink, and that don't sound fed up. Do you think it's some sort of promotion ? Mule minder, p'raps. Last time 'e was on leaf 'e said 'e wished 'e was in the transport." "They don't put infantry into trans- port, not now. I only wish they did, then 1 (Continued at foot of next eolupin.)

BY THE WAY. Random Jottings about Men and Things. The other day I was invited A Contrast, to a war lunch at one of the most fashionable West-End restaurants in London. It was a table d'hôte meal priced at 5s. We had five varietiesi2f hors d'eeuvres (sardines, eggs, salads, &c.), soup, salmon, beefsteak, with ne,v potatoes and macaroni, stewed fruit and bread, and a band played all the time. In contrast, let me tell you of a Berlin solicitor's complaint about the prices at a station restaurant in Germany. (I take the facts from the Deutsche Tagezeitung of June 2nd). A portion of veal cost 5s. an omelette 4s. 6d. At a confectioner's shop in a garrison town a ham sandwich cost half a crown; an egg cost 16, It is only possible to estimate Cerman the German man-power. There Man-Power, is a story going about that for years, in preparation for the war, she has been hiding her real census returns, and that in 1914 she had not 68,000,000, as the returns showed, but 90,000,000 of inhabitants. The story is based on very slender evidence and seems scarcely likely to be true. Writing last year, Mr. Gerard, the former U.S. Am- bassador in Berlin, estimated that Germany then had 9,000,000 available fighting men. Allowing for "attrition of 3,000,000 during the intervening sixteen months, we have still to reckon with 6,000,000 Huns. Do not let these figures worry you. The British and French are not beaten yet, Uncle Sam's second million is now on its way. and there are millions more to come if required. With all their ingenuity in Dodging Food organ isation the German Orders. authorities cannot stop illicit trading to dodge the Orders of the Food Controller. It goes on openly now. Apparently, if you go to a retailer of, say, meat or coffee, he will tell you he has none for sale, but he will let you have some if you can give him eggs or butter by way of ex- change. So desperate is the situation that the wives of highly-paid munition workers make expeditions into the country, and buy up farm produce at profiteering prices and ex- change it in the towns, with utter disregard of the regulations. They have to do this, they say, because the official rations are in- sufficient. We manage these things better in England. This is a little homily on Saving Helps. money. Cynics have sneered about money through the ages. There are a hundred proverbs about money, but only one puts all the rest in three words- Money is power." Money, so to speak, is condensed energy. When you get a week's pay for a week's work the bits of paper signed John Bradbury that you receive represent your labour. Every shilling of money that changes hands every day means somebody's labour. Somebody has put time and energy into earning it. Do you get the idea? Mr. -UcKenna, in the House of Commons the other day, put it in another way £ 5,000,000, he said, would represent the work of 25,000 men earning jE4 a week each for a year. Every man who earns good money to-day should save. What he does not spend is a double saving- it is something saved for him, and it is some- thing saved in the producing of labour of o,ther people. Saving really helps the country twice over. 11 y Nearly twenty years ago the Woe to Whom? great von Moltke gave the Ger- 11 man Reichstag a grave warning to which he shrewdly saw his countrymen were heading. He had no illusions about the power of German militarism being able to dominate civilisation in a short and sharp campaign. This is what he said:- The greatest Powers in Europe, armed as never before, enter conflict with one another. Not one of them can in one or two cam- paigns be so completely beaten that it will de- clare itself vanquished and be compelled to con- clude peace on hard terms, and that it would not raise itself up again to renew the battle, even if only after a year. It can become a seven years', a thirty years' war, and woe to him who first throws the match into the barrel of powder." Woe to him." To whom? There is only one answer. Lichnowsky says, We [Ger- many] pressed for war we insisted on war." A German points the finger at Germany and says Guilty Under arms to-day in the A Black American Army are 186,000 Squad. negroes. If the man-power of the United States is wholly put into the field, on the same scale as in Europe, 900,000 black soldiers appear in France and Flanders. What sort of fighting stock can be expected to come of a savage and slave ances- try ? Every student of the American Civil War knows the answer. Some of the best troops in that terrible struggle were blacks. From the selected stock that survived the most terrible ordeal of the slave-raiding days on the African coast a negro race has sprung with a physical stamina apparently more hardy than the white. This is indicated by the records of medical examination for the National Army. Among the first 2,500,000 men between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age who were summoned for exai-niii atioii, twenty-five out of every 100 whites were passed as physi- cally perfect, thirty-two out of every 100 negoes. It is not in the ranks alone that the is- negro fighter is found. There are 650 commis- sioned officers, all men' of college education, among them commanding coloured troops, and fresh promotions are frequently made. And, in addition. 225 negroes are serving as doctors and dentists, which implies that they hold diplomas from colleges.

COLD COMFORT. THE KAISER: You want help? Can't you see we'va got our hands full here?

====-==- -n- -====-==-=-======-=- "SIGNIFICANCE AND HOPE." The Austrian army and the Empire committed the whole of its strength to an offensive, and has had inflicted on it one of the most disastrous defeats of the war at a time when there is very serious discontent in Austria, and when three-fifths of the population are completely out of sympathy with the objects of the war-when they are far more in sympathy with the aims of the Allies, and know perfectly well that their only chance of achieving anything for themselves is that there should be a great Allied victory, and at a time when the whole of the Austrian prisoners belonging to one great part of a race in Austria have actually congregated together in order to fight on the Allied side-the prisoners in Siberia, the Jugo-Slovak race. All this is a matter full of significance and full of hope. The danger is not over. We must not pretend that it is Our difficulties are great. But those of the Central Powers are infinitely greater. Their operations are driven by hunger, and at the same time hindered by something not merely of the nature of discontent and suspicion, but even in several important cities of revolt. More than half of the people of the Austrian Empire sympathise with the objects of the countries with whom that Empire is at war. And the Central Powers have other difficulties in other countries-in Bulgaria, in Turkey. I am pointing these things out not in order to raise false hopes,but to emphasise one thing that should b e emphasised again and againviz. that all that we need do is to keep steady, to endure, to stand fast. —MR. LLOYD GEORGE.

U.S. TEACHING US A NEW GAME. [British Official. A jolly group of British and American soldiers in France. An American is explaining the use of the striker in their popular game of baseball. One, at least, of the spectators appears to be very puzzled about it.

FOOD TOPICS. Items about Rationing and Production. [By SMALLHOLDER. "] The Soft Fruit Order. If you grow less than a hundredweight of any kind of soft fruit, remember that it is not controlled. You may either sell, eat, bottle it, or make your own jam of it as usual. It is to be feared that many people have been scared and misled about this, and that a lot of fruit will go to waste in consequence. Even the "Spectator" prints a letter from some correspondent who understands that the Government is ordering people not to bottle their green gooseberries, but to let them ripen and make jam of them. This is quite untrue for small growers, and not even accurate for big ones. In this matter of soft fruit, it may be just as well to say exactly what the Ministry of Food are doing. Long before it was ripe, they had arranged for col- lection from the larger growers and transport to the jam factories, so that, if the crop were heavy, there should be no waste. When they saw that the crop would be light, they forbade its sale by such growers after June 17th ex- cept to the jam makers. The Army needs the jam. But, in the Order made about it, there was a clause (2b) which expressly says: "This shall not apply to a grower, in relation to any variety of soft fruit, where his total crop of that variety grown in the United Kingdom during the 1918 season is less than lcwt." That is to say, it does not apply at all if a man grows less than lcwt. each of quite a number of fruits—say, gooseberries, red currants, black currants, raspberries, and strawberries. Nor, of course, will it apply to hard fruits when the time comes. As for the Order against picking half-grown gooseberries, the purpose of that was different. The Spectator'' correspondent has mixed up two things. No Rotting Strawberries. How ready some newspapers are to make mischief! One of them came out the other day with a paragraph headed The Great Jam Muddle." It was about the price allowed to the growers, which is 44s. per cwt. for strawberries, as compared with 26s., the top price last year. Without inquiry, this paper accepted a statement by a Member of Parliament that growers were letting their fruit rot by tons because they thought 44s. too little. At Covent Garden market, or in any of the fruit-growing counties, the story might have been found to have no foundation in fact. Some other daily papers inquired, and said that it seemed to have none; but out came this wanton head-line all the'same, and in a paper with a large circulation! People have no doubt been disaffected by it, for one hears them talking as if the decision to let strawberries be sold in the shops at week-ends were taken as a result of agitation. It was taken, of course, because the jam factories could not be induced to work on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. The Allotments Crop. It is officially estimated that there are now in this country upwards of 1,400,000 allot- ments. The pre-war figure was about 570,000. They at present cover an area of about 200,000 acres. Calculating that 50 per cent. of each is planted with potatoes (a conservative esti- mate), there are 100,000 acres of potatoes on allotments. If these produce an average of seven tons per acre (a moderate assumption for garden and allotment potato crops), this means that the allotment holders of England and Wales will grow this year 700,000 tons of the most essential war-time crop. Our" Larder. The reference is to our larder on the other side of the Atlantic, and we may speak of it in the possessive because the Americans, with splendid spirit, have shown us that in the matter of food what is theirs is ours itoo. In spite of the heavy shipments of food that larder is still bulging with good things. Here are figures showing what o was in cold storage on May 1st last. The quantities represent millions of lbs. 1918 1917 Increase million lbs. million lbs. per cent. Frozen Beef 227 118 91.7 Cured Beef 31 29 5.36 Frozen Pork 133 76 75.03 Dry Sallt Pork 470 219 114.13 Pickled Pork 404 377 7.23 Lard 102 61 66.84 Only lamb and mutton showed a decrease, and the total reserve was 1,373,338,318 lbs. of meat food compared with 887,999,765 lbs. a year earlier. This is news that will make the Ger- mans and Austrians more hungry than ever. Vienna Communal Kitchen Prices. From the "Abeiter Zeitung I learn that in the communal kitchen of an Electric Works—a kitchen opened to provide meals for workmen and their families—you cannot buy meat unless you buy vegetables, but as a portion of meat and vegetables costs Is. lOd. there is little doing. The Vienna paper says very bitterly The kitchen, which is sup- posed to be run on charitable lines, is simply an intolerable burden to the workmen." They are charged for meat at the rate of 28s. per lb.

[Continued from previous column.] p'raps my boy-arf a tick, Agnes." Light came suddenly to Mrs. Mann. It is pro- motion at least, it's a decoration. Some- thing medal—Military Medal, that's it. hy, Agnes, yer boy's a 'ero. Well now, ain't that grand? A 'ero whispered Agnes. Her eyes grew misty. Alf a hero Her own milkman, with his musical yodel and clattering truck. A hero! Hadn't she known it all along? I'll send 'im some fags this very day," she said to the fender. That I will." A sunbeam shone in through the win- dow, and the fender winked. G. F. N.

[Continued from previous column.] lent, also sardines, or lobster, and fresh shelled shrimps, or the Dublin Prawns when they are obtainable Savoury Jellied Mould.—INGREDIENTS.—1 oz. gelatine; teacup water: two brearkfasi-cups of mixed vegetables (turnip, carrot, beetroot, peas); teacup butter beans; two hard-boiled eggs one pint vegetable stock pepper, salt. METHOD.—Melt the gelatine in water over a gentle heat. and strain into it a pint of clear, well-flavoured vegetable stock. Rinse a basin or mould and arrange in it some rounds of hard- boiled egg and pour in a little jelly. When set add some mixed vegetables, which should be pre- viously eooked and cut into dice; then another layer of jelly, then a layer of cooked butter beans. Proceed till the mould is lull. Serve, when set. with green salad: Mayonnaise Sauce without Oil. INURE- DIKNTS.—Two eggs, one tin unsweetened eon- I densed milk one teaspoonful cornflour, one gill J strong vinegar, half teaspoonlul mustard, salt, M cavenne pepper, pepper. METHOD.—Beat up the eggs in a basin with J the milk and cornflour. Place over a basin of | boiling water and beat till a thick cream} sub- V stance is formed. Put the mustard, salt, pepper, and cayenne and vinegar in a basin and mix well, then add to the previously prepared cream. Fish Sal ad.INGREDIENTS.-On, breakfast- cup cold cooked fish, 1 breakfastcup cold pota- toes, sliced, 1 teacup shrimps, 1 hard-boiled egg, moderate-sized beetroot. METHOD.—Shred the fish, and lay in a deep dish or soup-plate on a layer of potatoes, well seasoned. Bordor with sliced beetroot which has been dipped in vinegar. Garnish with J chopped egg and finely chopped parsley. HQ 1