War Office has given him an infinity of gadgets. For every stunt
an appropriate countering gadget. Does the foe strafe him with a
gas-bombing stunt? "Ha, ha!" laughs he, and dons that unlovely but
priceless gadget, his box-respirator. But by no means all gadgets have
just one peculiar stunt to counter; such a definition would exclude,
for instance, the height-gauge on a plane, which is emphatically,
wholly and eternally a gadget of gadgets. Moreover, gadgets are small
things. The airman's "joystick" is a gadget; the tank is not. Now are
these views sound, Sir, or is it permissible, as one authority does,
to describe persons as "gadgets"?

One final word. A nervous subaltern recently appeared before his
Adjutant and called the Wurzel-Flummery Electro-Dynamical Apparatus,
Mark II., "this sky-plotter stunt." "Great Heavens!" gasped the
Adjutant, "what is the Service coming to? Stunt? Gadget, man, gadget!"
Three days later the hapless boy found himself desired to resign on
the grounds of "gross ignorance of military terminology."

I am, dear Mr. Punch,

Yours solemnly,

ARCHIBALD.

* * * * *

[Illustration: TRIALS OF A CAMOUFLAGE OFFICER.

HAVING CAMOUFLAGED SOME COAST DEFENCES HE GOES TO SEA TO OBSERVE THE
EFFECT.]