Football is the great topic of discussion in the trenches. Mr. Harold
Ashton, of the _Daily News and Leader_, relates an amusing encounter
with a Royal Horse Artilleryman to whom he showed a copy of the paper.
"Where's the sporting news?" asked the artilleryman as he glanced over
the pages. "Shot away in the war," replied Mr. Ashton. "What!" exclaimed
Tommy, "not a line about the Arsenal? Well, I'm blowed! This _is_ a
war!" "We are all in good spirits," writes a bombardier in the 44th
Battery, Royal Artillery, "and mainly anxious to know how football is
going on in Newcastle now." "I got this," said a Gordon Highlander,
referring to his wound, "because I became excited in an argument with
wee Geordie Ferris, of our company, about the chances of Queen's Park
and Rangers this season."

An artilleryman sends a description of the fighting written in the
jargon of the football field. He describes the war as "the great match
for the European Cup, which is being played before a record gate, though
you can't perhaps see the crowd." In spite of all their swank, he adds,
"the Germans haven't scored a goal yet, and I wouldn't give a brass
farthing for their chances of lifting the Cup." At the battle of Mons it
was noticed that some soldiers even went into action with a football
attached to their knapsacks!

But there is no end to the humor of Tommy Atkins. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe
tells in the _Daily Mail_ how he stopped to sympathize with a wounded
soldier on the roadside near Mons. Asking if his injury was very painful
he received the remarkable reply: "Oh, it's not that. I lost my pipe in
the last blooming charge." In a letter from the front, published in the
_Glasgow Herald_, this passage occurs: "Our fellows have signed the
pledge because Kitchener wants them to. But they all say, 'God help the