Austrians, in the hope that by this means loyal inhabitants would be able to send them valuable information concerning the enemy.

Messages were attached to the birds in various ways. The commonest and perhaps the best was by means of a pair of small aluminum tubes, which fitted snugly one into the other like sections of a telescope, forming a capsule or cylinder closed at both ends. The tube having the slightly larger diameter was fastened by metal bands, mouth upward, to the leg of the pigeon; the smaller one containing the message was then pushed into the larger, mouth downward.

The Italians sometimes used a very small chamois leather envelope which, after receiving the message, was buttoned around the leg of the bird. In emergencies the message was simply wrapped around the pigeon's leg and secured by two ordinary rubber bands.

Where unusually long messages, sketches, or maps were sent, they were

put in a light cloth knapsack made to fit the rounded breast of the bird, and held in position by elastic bands which circled the body, crossing on the back. Sometimes as much as fifteen feet of moving-picture film negative was carried by a pigeon in this way.

The "homes" to which the birds returned were either more or less permanent structures at important centers well in the rear, or mobile pigeon lofts which followed the movements of the fighting forces, to supply them with the birds they needed, and to receive the messages brought back from points at the front. When a mobile loft was moved to a new position the birds were given a few days' preliminary training before being entrusted with important messages.

Although a homing pigeon has been known to fly eleven hundred miles from Rome, Italy, to its home loft in Durham, England, war pigeons were required to make comparatively short flights. For distances up to fifty or sixty miles they are practically infallible, as is shown by

the fact that about 95 per cent of all messages intrusted to British pigeons during the war were safely delivered.

American pigeons, too, gave an excellent account of themselves, often under most trying circumstances during the comparatively short time our army was in the field. In the Meuse-Argonne sector alone, American birds delivered four hundred and three messages, some of them of great importance. Many pigeons were killed; many others crippled for life. Perhaps the best-known hero in the American Pigeon Service is Cher Ami, who lost a leg in the Argonne fight. The little courier was hit by a bullet just as he was leaving Grand Pré, and as he staggered, the boys in the trenches who were watching him expected to see him fall. But he carried on and, almost covered with blood, delivered his message at Rampont, nearly twenty-five miles away, in exactly twenty-five minutes.

Lord Adelaide, an American pigeon working with the tanks at St.-Mihiel, was badly wounded by shrapnel, but delivered his message. The Poilu, with head and neck badly cut, reached his loft in the Meuse-Argonne sector with information which enabled American gunners to effect the almost complete destruction of an enemy ammunition train. Many another plucky bird lost an eye or a leg in the service of Uncle Sam, and the deeds of each are on record.

But it remained for the French to confer in their own charming way the honors they felt were due their pigeon heroes. Birds which performed distinguished service, or showed unusual courage in the line of duty, were awarded the Croix de Guerre or the Croix Militaire. Diplomas with the citations were issued and kept at the headquarters of the French Pigeon Service, and because pigeons cannot wear medals on their breasts, special bands, with the colors of the decorations, were made for their legs.

A bird which will go down in French

VOL. CXLII.-No. 848.-23

history just as surely as Field-Marshal Foch himself is the one which carried from Vaux to Verdun the last message for help sent by Commandant Raynal before the Germans captured the fort. This pigeon flew through a hail of fire and a gas barrage, and, wounded and gassed, dropped dead as it delivered its message. It was awarded the Légion d'Honneur.

As savers of individual lives, pigeons did some of their finest work with the seaplanes, all of which carried several birds. birds. The following story, which the writer heard at the headquarters of the Air Force Pigeon Service in London, is typical of many which have to do with rescues, no one of which would have been made but for the unerring instinct, strong flight, and splendid courage of a homing pigeon.

It was late afternoon. One of England's largest seaplanes had just completed a long antisubmarine patrol above the North Sea, and her tired pilot gladly swung her round and headed for his base. Then something went wrong. The huge craft plunged downward, righted itself, plunged again, and dived sidewise into the water. There was an ominous cracking and ripping, some quick, dangerous work by the crew, and four men stood upon a wrecked and wave-swept seaplane. How long she would float, heavily laden as she was with motor and armament, none could tell, but what every man did know was that help must come quickly from somewhere or it need not come at all.

Then somebody shouted, "The pigeons!" A dripping basket was found and opened; but, alas, two of the three birds were dead, and the survivor so wet and chilled that its recovery was doubtful. But it seemed to be the only chance, and an officer wrapped it in a woolen muffler, which by some miracle was dry, and placed the bundle inside his shirt. In half an hour the pigeon had somewhat revived, and as the daylight was already failing it was decided to wait no longer. A brief message was

It was an anxious moment when the pilot climbed to a high point on the wreck and tossed the little messenger into the air. It fell, and every heart sank with it, but it lifted a little as it caught itself just above the waves. For several seconds it barely held its own, then, seeming to gain strength by its own effort, it arose slowly, squared away, and disappeared in the battleship gray.

Somewhere on the northeast coast of England night was approaching under a drizzly mist, and a raw wind whipped land and sea around the lonely group of buildings of a Royal Air Force Pigeon Station. It was teatime, and a welcome hour to the little group of bronzed men in British uniform who were chatting and laughing around the small fire in the messroom. One of them was telling a story of a Portuguese commander who had mistaken a gift of two baskets of British homing pigeons for an addition to the food supply, and who, in his letter of thanks to the British commander, had naïvely remarked that he and his staff had "enjoyed them very much indeed." But the laugh which greeted this story was cut in two by a sound which caused every man in the room to pause and listen-it was the sharp, insistent call of an electric bell which rings automatically when a homing pigeon enters the "trap." A noncommissioned officer set down his cup of tea untasted, arose and opened the door leading to the pigeon loft. From a corner where it was huddled he lifted a light-blue pigeon, very wet and bedraggled, skillfully removed a small aluminum cylinder from its right leg, slipped

"Ere!" he called, "set this blarsted pigeon on the 'arth till it dries art," and before the order could be obeyed he had drawn from the little cylinder a roll of tissue paper, smoothed it out flat, and was reading aloud:

"Machine wrecked and breaking up fifteen miles southeast of Rocky Point. Send boat.”

Two men had already reached for their oilskins and were passing out of the door into the fog. Another minute and those sipping their tea heard the staccato "put-put-put" of a motor boat dying away in the general direction of Rocky Point.

Darkness had fallen on the North Sea, and four men, wet and chilled, still clung to a wrecked seaplane. They had little hope that their message had been delivered, or, if it had, that help would come in time to save them. The wind had risen, and now and then the waves tore away some portion of the wreck, which sank lower and lower in the water. At last there came a sound-the sweetest music they had ever heard the siren of a motor boat. Again and again it sounded, each time nearer; then the heartened men arose and sent up a wild shout in answer, and a hissing bow shot toward them from the darkness.

On top of a little basket by the fire in the messroom a modest blue pigeon sat quietly preening its damp feathers. And the next morning the British papers reported:

"Seaplane N-64 lost in the North Sea, fifteen miles southeast of Rocky Point. All the crew were saved.”

AT

T the time his co-operation had seemed obvious and necessary. Jensen had begun by being philosophical. He had argued that no man could possibly be compelled to live the kind of life that lay before him for the next two years the extreme limit that had been forecast for him. Then he had become descriptive. "Think of me," Jensen had said, "slowly rotting; mental agony gradually giving place to physical agony. And the first part will be infinitely worse for me than for the average man because I know every detail of the process beforehand. I realize, now, how all my horrible anticipations will be drowned inch by inch in torture and discomfort. My mind will be wrecked. I shall lose all semblance of humanity and die shrieking like a mangled hare. . . .

And at the time, Seeley had not paused to inquire why Jensen needed an accessory. It was not until he was sure that Jensen was actually dead that his own participation in the tragedy had presented itself in the light of a crime. Before that, so long as Jensen himself had still the last faint capacity for suffering and expression, he had appeared as the sole object worthy of consideration. It was so essentially his tragedy; and all Seeley's efforts had been directed to the task of lessening its terror. When he had argued he had had no thought of himself; he had been moved by the single impulse of sympathy. He had desired, with almost perfect self-forgetfulness, to do what was best for Jensen.

But when Jensen's spirit had hidden itself forever Seeley, in the first shock of loneliness, had felt a cold thrill of fear. This fear had had no connection with the chilled and stiffening figure that had

so recently represented the spirit of Jensen, but with the plain and practical conception of the consequences that might await himself. At the best he had been a willing accessory to a self-murder. He would be asked why he had done nothing to save Jensen that crime. They would load him with the entire responsibility. And he knew, now, with such a detestable clearness just what he could have done. He could have gone away! Jensen had been afraid. He had needed support and co-operation. He had always been like that, the creature of his audience. He had not even had the independence and the courage to die alone. And in dying before an audience. he had in some awful way shifted the responsibility. He had not committed suicide. He had been murdered.

Seeley had no hope of escape from that deduction. Against any sophistry of which he might have been capable, against any long-drawn excuse on the grounds of expedience or sheer humanity, there remained the clear evidence of Jensen's room. Every familiar detail of it rose up and bore witness against him, and particularly that framed certificate which testified that Robert Graves Jensen had at the age of fourteen won honors in the Junior Cambridge Local Examination. He was a boy of such brilliant promise, the certificate proclaimed, the pride of his family and his school; and where is he now? He might at least have been saved for another two years. Perhaps for longer? There were no certainties in pathology. Any day a new lymph, a new treatment, a new diagnosis might be discovered, and Jensen's disease be pronounced curable.

Seeley had had no answer to that chal

lenge. He had known that he was condemned from the moment that he had been left alone in the midst of all those living reminders of Jensen's personality. He had recognized himself as a criminal.

...

He was afraid of Jensen's room. It was clamorous with reproach; it threatened him with vengeance, plotting to retain a dozen evidences of his presence there, on this fatal night. There were two tumblers on the table, more cigarette ends in the ash-tray than one man could have consumed. He could not remember whether he had brought his pipe with him, and he dared not search the room for it. He must have left finger prints on the glass, on the furniture . . . on the hypodermic syringe that had been the instrument of Jensen's death! The room would shout its accusation of him to the most perfunctory inquirer. Yet he could not stay to eliminate one single item of all the vast number of attestations against him. He would be sure to overlook something, and in any case he could not endure the horrible sense of guilt inspired by the thought of trying to destroy the evidences of his crime. He had but one desire to escape, furtively, silently, in order that he might find a temporary sanctuary in his own home. There he would wait, free at least from the strident voices of this desperate room, until they came to arrest him.

But they had never come.

Seeley had not been called to give evidence at the inquest, nor had his name been mentioned in the course of the proceedings. No one had known that he had been there that night. There was nothing to connect him with Jensen's death. The verdict of suicide and the excuse of temporary insanity had been arrived at without a hint of hesitation. The coroner had spoken gently of Jensen's motive as revealed by the specialist who had condemned him. The coroner had almost suggested that, in the horrible circumstances, Jensen's act might find Divine condonation.

Yet Seeley continued to believe that they would presently come to fetch him. That room would not be content until justice was done. One day it would find a listener and deliver its secret. And, at last, the thought of that room steadfastly awaiting its opportunity lured him to go and see it again.

When he saw a card in the window announcing that the room was to be let furnished, a new idea came to him. He might take the room himself. If he did that he could keep other people out of it; give it no chance to speak to anyone of the secret that he, alone, shared with it.

A new servant opened the door for him when he rang; a bright, cheerful girl who seemed to welcome his inquiry.

"Yes, we got one room to let," she said, "a nice bed-sittin'-room. It's been empty ever since I come."

He hesitated on the threshold, bracing himself for the encounter, and asked her how long she had been in the house.

"Five weeks last Monday," she told him, so he knew that she had not come there until more than a week after the inquest.

"It's a good room for ten shillin' a week," she went on, "the cheapest room in the 'ouse. Jus' been done up an' all."

He went in boldly, then, and saw that the room had been gagged and stifled for all time. They had repapered its walls with a pink inanity of rosebuds, muffled its furniture in a ribald chintz, swathed and bound this ghastly tomb in the obscene gauds and fripperies of decent respectability.

He could have laughed at its complete frustration. It seemed to him like a resentful and protesting corpse, prinked and pampered into the likeness of youth. "A nice, cheerful room, I call it," the new maid said.

He was free. The last witness against him had been muted and bound for all time. Once more he could lift his head and look the world in the face.

The next day he began to work again. He found that he could not work well.