Front for a couple of days devotes at least a chapter of his resultant
book to it. "How in thunder does Thomas do it?" they ask. "What the
mischief does he find to laugh at?" Listen.

Years ago, when the well-known War was young, a great man sat in
his sanctum exercising his grey matter. Ho said to himself, "There
is a War on. Men, amounting to several, will be prised loose from
comfortable surroundings and condemned to get on with it for the term
of their unnatural lives. They will be shelled, gassed, mined and
bombed, smothered in mud, worked to the bone, bored stiff and scared
silly. Fatigues will be unending, rations short, rum diluted, reliefs
late and leave nil. Their girls will forsake them for diamond-studded
munitioneers. Their wives will write saying, 'Little Jimmie has the
mumps; and what about the rent? You aren't spending all of five bob a
week on yourself, are you?' This is but a tithe (or else a tittle) of
the things that will occur to them, and their sunny natures will sour
and sicken if something isn't done about it."

The great man sat up all night chewing penholders and pondering on the
problem. The BIG IDEA came with the end of the eighth penholder.

He sprang to his feet, fires of inspiration flashing from his eyes,
and boomed, "Let there be _Funny Cuts_!"--then went to bed. Next
morning he created "I." (which stands for Intelligence), carefully
selected his Staff, arrayed them in tabs of appropriate hue, and told
them to go the limit. And they have been going it faithfully ever
since. What the Marines are to the Senior Service, "I." is to us.
Should a Subaltern come in with the yarn that the spook of HINDENBURG
accosted him at Bloody Corner and offered him a cigar, or a balloon
cherub buttonhole you with the story of a Bosch tank fitted with