One must admit that being a child in Shanghai these days is not much fun as activities for them are so curtailed, but with our children, heard of nothing in real life which has so reminded her of conversations in *Alice in Wonderland" as the vapourings of our military spokesmen. The only difference is that if you take the trouble to work out the construction of the Wonderland utterances it is possible to arrive at some meaning. Thus the Wonderland Queen to Alice:—"Never imagine yourself not to be Otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you have been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." While our spokesmen, military and political say things which to Hester sound like:
The situation in Belle Morte has gone through processes of unfolding. revealing conditions previously unsuspected and highly involved, and whereas the one side, rather than what it formerly expected, has achieved that which it had previously despaired of accomplishing, the other side has surprisingly gained unto itself astonishing results from its unplanned and unforeseen strategy true developments from which cannot be anticipated but will when materialized, bring a termination which will astonish, not only the World (and most especially his wife), but those who have set forth upon and taken part in this campaign of confusion.
The answer will be found in a citrous fruit of elongated proportions, rather out of the sphere that is, and the reward will be the pip for all unconcerned. Which is exactly as it leaves Hester at present.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.