In a world of insecurity and change it is good to have one bedrock
certainty upon which the mind can rest. Thrones totter and fall;
Commanders-in-chief are superseded; Admirals of the High Fleet are
displaced; in politics leaders come and go and reputations pass; in
ordinary life a thousand mutations are visible. But amid all this flux
there remains mercifully one resolute piece of routine that nothing
can alter. Whatever may be happening elsewhere in the world--mutinies
in the German Navy, revolutions in Russia, advances in France,
advances in Flanders--Leicester Square keeps its head. Armageddon
may be turning the world upside down, but it cannot cause those old
antagonists, STEVENSON and REECE, to cease their perpetual contest;
and if the War lasts another ten years you will read in _The Times_
of October 17th, 1927, a paragraph to the effect that "at the close
of play yesterday in the billiard match of 16,000 points up between
Stevenson and Reece, at the Grand Hall, Leicester Square, the scores
were: Reece (in play), 4,676; Stevenson, 2,837."
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