after-theater supper at the hotels unless you are a guest. Men in
khaki uniforms are more conspicuous; and bandaged heads, slung arms,
and legs assisted by crutches are more noticeable than formerly.

The searchlights flash above the city; the street lights are shaded
overhead in foolish fancy as a protection from aeroplanes or
dirigibles. Curtains are closely drawn by police orders, in the houses
and railway trains.

Yet one of the airmen who had been over London at night told me that
the city was just as conspicuous as though it were wide open in
illumination. Indeed, there is a general call among the Londoners for
the police to let up and permit electric signs, lighted windows, and
more light in the streets. But the only answer that came early in
December was orders to turn down the lights further!

In Paris they turned on the lights, illuminated the streets, closed up
the museums and galleries, buried their art and sent the Venus de Milo
on a walk to some storage vault along with the banks' reserve gold.
London's museums and picture galleries are wide open, and the endeavor
to protect the streets from Germans peering down from above looks
childish. The great strategy of the Germans consists of talking across
the Channel about their plans for raiding England. I suspect that the
English military authorities do not object. It encourages enlistment.
When enlistment gets dull, the Germans stimulate it with some shells
thrown on the English coast.

There are only two or three new plays in London this season; the great
war-plays and dramas, and indeed the literature of this war, have yet
to be written. Nearly all the new presentations for which London is so