The WAVES are about to come ashore again. For eight weeks we've struggled bravely--although sometimes it looked like a losing fight--with the pay accounts of the USS California. For eight weeks who have lived in a world populated by out stalwart hero, J. A. Hancock, the vaguely beneficent presence of the CO, Brigham Scott, and by the more or less sinister though shadowy figure of Varnell Richardson, Julius Dortch, and bad old Luther Leinuel Green. We've figured their messman pay, their court-martial fines, their SKMC, AOD, S and FSD, and many other alphabetical sins and virtues. (Who ever said the New Deal started the alphabet on its way to fame? We think the Navy rates the distinction!). We've bitten off many a pencil point over Kirby's flight pay and Hancock's advance pay and Cadaret's promotion pay. We know them so well by now that we're going to miss them, even though we expect to feel more at ease on land.

Yes, the first and toughest part of the course is over. As this paper goes to press, we are in the midst of a nine-hour final exam on Disbursing Afloat. We hope there will be no marine casualties to report as a result.

If the remaining three weeks of the course go as rapidly as the first eight, no one will be ale to complain of the monotony. There have been, in the past, moments of impatience when we wished we could turn the clock ahead, but as the time for departure approaches, there are many more moments when twinges of--panic seize hold. Once in the dim civilian past we had doubts about living, eating, and working with sixty-four others in constant attendance; all that is gone--today we have much more alarming doubts about living and working without the sixty-four around! We'll have to go looking for new people to tell our troubles to, to borrow (?) our cigarettes from, and to share our misgivings over what tomorrow may bring while we bend over today's laundry.

Mention of laundry, that bane of every WAVE's existence, brings to mind thoughts of a unique institution here at Briggs Hall, the Alcove. The Alcove is no secluded nook, as its name might imply, where one may while away spare moments in intimate conversation with a friend. It is, rather, the equivalent of the corner drugstore, the village post-office, or somebody's backyard. It is a quaint combination of laundry, shower-room, and telephone booth that none but a Navy mind could have dreamed up. Here of a sunny afternoon, any day after four o'clock, the following scene is sure to be enacted: the shower going merrily, the washtub bubbling over with soapsuds, the ironing board in constant use, and someone, wide-eyed, holding what she hopes to be a conversation audible to the person at the other end. Of one thing we're sure--it's audible at this end!

As their gesture towards the furthering of international friendship with our British allies, the WAVES entertained a group of British naval officers at tea on Sunday at Briggs Hall. The talk was animated, the tea came up to highest American standards, at least, and the upshot was that the Britishers stayed on to dinner.