March, 1917.

With the end of Tsardom in Russia, the fall of Baghdad, and the strategic retreat of Hindenburg on the Western front, all crowded into one month, March fully maintains its reputation for making history at the expense of Caesars and Kaisers. It seems only the other day when the Tsar's assumption of the title of Generalissimo lent new strength to the legend of the "Little Father." But the forces of "unholy Russia"—Pro-German Ministers and the sinister figure of Rasputin—have combined to his undoing, and now none is so poor to do him reverence. In the House of Commons everybody seems pleased, including Mr. Devlin, who has been quite statesmanlike in his appreciation, and the Prime Minister, in one of his angelic visits to the House, evoked loud cheers by describing the Revolution as one of the landmarks in the history of the world. But no one noticed that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's outburst in 1906, just after the dissolution of Russia's first elected Parliament: "La Duma est morte; vive la Duma! " has now been justified by the event—at any rate for the moment, for Revolutions are rich in surprises and reactions. The capture of Baghdad inspires no misgivings, except in the bosoms of Nationalist members, who detect in the manifesto issued by General Maude fresh evidences of British hypocrisy.

The fleet of Dutch merchantmen, which has been sunk by a waiting submarine, sailed under a German guarantee of "relative security." Germany is so often misunderstood. It should be obvious by this time that her attitude to International Law has always been one of approximate reverence. The shells with which she bombarded Rheims Cathedral were contingent shells, and the Lusitania was sunk by a relative torpedo. Neutrals all over the world, who are smarting just now under a fresh manifestation of Germany's respective goodwill, should try to realise before they take any action what is the precise situation of our chief enemy: He has (relatively) won the War; he has (virtually) broken the resistance of the Allies; he has (conditionally) ample supplies for his people; in particular he is (morally) rich in potatoes. His finances at first sight appear to be pretty heavily involved, but that soon will be adjusted by (hypothetical) indemnities; he has enormous (proportional) reserves of men; he has (theoretically) blockaded Great Britain, and his final victory is (controvertibly) at hand. But his most impressive argument, which cannot fail to come home to hesitating Neutrals, is to be found in his latest exhibition of offensive power, namely, in his (putative) advance—upon the Ancre.

A grave statement made by the Under-Secretary for War as to the recent losses of the Royal Flying Corps on the Western front and the increased activity of the German airmen has created some natural depression. The command of the air fluctuates, but the spirit of our airmen is a sure earnest that the balance will be redressed in our favour. Mr. Punch has already paid his tribute to the British infantryman. Let him now do his homage to the heroes whose end is so often disguised under the laconic announcement: "One of our machines did not return."



I like to think it did not fall to earth, A wounded bird that trails a broken wing, But to the heavenly blue that gave it birth, Faded in silence, a mysterious thing, Cleaving its radiant course where honour lies Like a winged victory mounting to the skies.

The clouds received it, and the pathless night; Swift as a flame, its eager force unspent, We saw no limit to its daring flight; Only its pilot knew the way it went, And how it pierced the maze of flickering stars Straight to its goal in the red planet Mars.

So to the entrance of that fiery gate, Borne by no current, driven by no breeze, Knowing no guide but some compelling fate, Bold navigators of uncharted seas, Courage and youth went proudly sweeping by, To win the unchallenged freedom of the sky.

Parliament has been occupied with many matters, from the Report of the Dardanelles Commission to the grievances of Scots bee-keepers. The woes of Ireland have not been forgotten, and the Nationalists have been busily engaged in getting Home Rule out of cold storage. Hitherto every attempt of the British Sisyphus to roll the Stone of Destiny up the Hill of Tara has found a couple of Irishmen at the top ready to roll it down again. Let us hope that this time they will co-operate to install it there as the throne of a loyal and united Ireland. Believers in the "Hidden Hand" have been on the war-path, and as a result of prolonged discussion as to the responsibility for the failure of the effort to force the Dardanelles, the House is evidently of opinion that Lord Fisher might now be let alone by foes and friends. The idea of blaming Queen Elisabeth for the fiasco is so entirely satisfactory to all parties concerned that one wonders why the Commission couldn't have thought of that itself.



Mr. Bernard Shaw, returned from his "joy-ride" at the Front, has declared that "there is no monument more enduring than brass"; the general feeling, however, is that there is a kind of brass that is beyond enduring. Armageddon is justified since it has given him a perfectly glorious time. He is obliged, in honesty, to state that the style of some of the buildings wrecked by the Germans was quite second rate. He entered and emerged from the battle zone without any vulgar emotion; remaining immune from pity, sorrow, or tears. In short:

He went through the fiery furnace, but never a hair was missed From the heels of our most colossal Arch-Super-Egotist.

According to the latest news from Sofia, 35,000 Bulgarian geese are to be allowed to go to Germany. As in the case of the Bulgarian Fox who went to Vienna, there appears to be little likelihood that they will ever return.



Apropos of food supplies, Lord Devonport has developed a sense of judicial humour, having approved a new dietary for prisoners, under which the bread ration will be cut down to 63 ounces per week, or just one ounce less than the allowance of the free and independent Englishman. The latest morning greeting is now: "Comment vous Devonportez-vous?"



April, 1917.

Once more the rulers of Germany have failed to read the soul of another nation. They thought there was no limit to America's forbearance, and they thought wrong. America is now "all in" on the side of the Allies. The Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack are flying side by side over the Houses of Parliament. On the motion introduced in both Houses to welcome our new Ally, Mr. Bonar Law, paraphrasing Canning, declared that the New World had stepped in to redress the balance of the old; Mr. Asquith, with a fellow-feeling, no doubt, lauded the patience which had enabled President Wilson to carry with him a united nation; and Lord Curzon quoted Bret Harte. The memory of some unfortunate phrases is obliterated by the President's historic message to Congress, and his stirring appeal to his countrymen to throw their entire weight into the Allied scale. The War, physically as well as morally, is now Germania contra Mundum. Yet, while we hail the advent of a powerful and determined Ally, there is no disposition to throw up our hats. The raw material of manpower in America is magnificent in numbers and quality, but it has to be equipped and trained and brought across the Atlantic. Many months, perhaps a whole year, must elapse before its weight can be felt on the battle front. The transport of a million men over submarine-infested seas is no easy task. But while we must wait for the coming of the Americans on land, their help in patrolling the seas may be counted on speedily.



The British have entered Peronne; the Canadians have captured Vimy Ridge. But the full extent of German frightfulness has never been so clearly displayed as in their retreat. Here, for once, the German account of their own doings is true. "In the course of these last months great stretches of French territory have been turned by us into a dead country. It varies in width from 10 to 12 or 13 kilometres, and extends along the whole of our new positions. No village or farm was left standing, no road was left passable, no railway track or embankment was left in being. Where once were woods, there are gaunt rows of stumps; the wells have been blown up.... In front of our new positions runs, like a gigantic ribbon, our Empire of Death" (Lokal Anzeiger, March 18, 1917). The general opinion of the Boche among the British troops is that he is only good at one thing, and that is destroying other people's property. One of Mr. Punch's correspondents writes to say that while the flattened villages and severed fruit trees are a gruesome spectacle, for him "all else was forgotten in speechless admiration of the French people.

"Their self-restraint and adaptability are beyond words. These hundreds of honest people, just relieved from the domineering of the Master Swine, and restored to their own good France again, were neither hysterical nor exhausted." The names of the new German lines—Wotan and Siegfried and Hunding—are not without significance. We accept the omen: it will not be long before we hear of fresh German activities in the Goetterdaemmerung line. Count Reventlow has informed the Kaiser that without victory a continuation of the Monarchy is improbable. The "repercussion" of Revolution is making itself felt. Even the Crown Prince is reported to have felt misgivings as to the infection of anti-monarchial ideas, and Mr. Punch is moved to forecast possibilities of upheaval:

Not that the Teuton's stolid wits Are built to plan so rude a plot; Somehow I cannot picture Fritz Careering as a sans-culotte; Schooled to obedience, hand and heart, I can imagine nothing odder Than such behaviour on the part Of inoffensive cannon-fodder.

And yet one never really knows. You cannot feed his massive trunk On fairy tales of beaten foes, Or Hindenburg's "victorious" bunk; And if his rations run too short Through this accursed British blockade, Even the worm may turn and sport A revolutionary cockade.

On the German Roll of Dishonour this month appears the name of one who has been grande et conspicuum nostro quoque tempore monstrum. Baron Moritz Ferdinand von Bissing, the German Military Governor-General of Belgium, who was largely responsible for the murder of Nurse Cavell and the chief instigator of the infamous Belgian deportations, after being granted a rest from his labours, is reported to have died "of overwork." Here for once we find ourselves in perfect agreement with the official German view. In a recent character sketch of the deceased Baron, the Cologne Gazette observed, "He is a fine musician, and his execution was good." It would have been.

The proceedings in Parliament do not call for extended comment. Mr. Asquith has handsomely recanted his hostility to women's suffrage, admitting that by their splendid services in the war women have worked out their own electoral salvation. An old spelling-book used to tell us that "it is agreeable to watch the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar when gauging the symmetry of a peeled pear." Lord Devonport, occupied in deciding on the exact architecture and decoration of the Bath bun (official sealed pattern), would make a companion picture. For the rest the House has been occupied with the mysteries of combing and re-combing. The best War saying of the month was that of Mr. Swift MacNeill, in reference to proposed peace overtures, that it would be time enough to talk about peace when the Germans ceased to blow up hospital ships.



Although the streets may have been sweetened by the absence of posters, days will come, it must be remembered, when we shall badly miss them. It goes painfully to one's heart to think that the embargo, if it is ever lifted, will not be lifted in time for most of the events which we all most desire—events that clamour to be recorded in the largest black type, such as "Strasbourg French Again," "Flight of the Crown Prince," "Revolution in Germany," "The Kaiser a Captive," and last and best of all, "Peace." But Mr. Punch, with many others, has no sympathy to spare for the sorrows of the headline artist deprived for the time being of his chief opportunity of scaremongering.

In the competition of heroism and self-sacrifice the prize must fall to the young—to the Tommy and the Second Lieutenant before all. Yet a very good mark is due to the retired Admirals who have accepted commissions in the R.N.R., and are mine-sweeping or submarine-hunting in command of trawlers. Yes, "Captain Dug-out, R.N.R.," is a fine disproof of si vieillesse pouvait.



According to the Pall Mall Gazette, Mr. Lloyd George's double was seen at Cardiff the other day. The suggestion that there are two Lloyd Georges has caused consternation among the German Headquarters Staff. But we are not exempt from troubles and anxieties in England. The bones of a woolly rhinoceros have been dug up twenty-three feet below the surface at High Wycombe, and very strong language has been used in the locality concerning this gross example of food-hoarding. The weather, too, has been behaving oddly. On one day of Eastertide there was an inch of snow in Liverpool, followed by hailstones, lightning, thunder, and a gale of wind. Summer has certainly arrived very early. But at least we are to be spared a General Election this year—for fear that it might clash with the other War.



May, 1917.

In England, once but no longer merry though not downhearted, in this once merry month of May, the question of Food and Food Production now dominates all others. It is the one subject that the House of Commons seems to care about. John Bull, who has invested a mint of money in other lands, realises that it is high time that he put something into his own—in the shape of Corn Bounties. Mr. Prothero, in moving the second reading of the Corn Production Bill, while admitting that he had originally been opposed to State interference with agriculture, showed all the zeal of the convert—to the dismay of the hard-shell Free Traders.

The Food Controller asks us to curtail our consumption of bread by one-fourth. Here, at least, non-combatants have an opportunity of showing themselves to be as good patriots as the Germans and of earning the epitaph: "Much as he loved the staff of life, he loved his country even more."



On the Western Front the German soldiers' opinion of "retirement according to plan" may be expressed as "each for himself and the Devil take the Hindenburg." One of them, recently taken prisoner, actually wrote, "When we go to the Front we become the worst criminals." This generous attempt to shield his superiors deserves to be appreciated, but it does not dispel the belief that the worst criminals are still a good way behind the German lines. The inspired German Press has now got to the point of asserting that "there is no Hindenburg line." Well, that implies prophetic sense:

And if a British prophet may Adopt their graphic present tense, I would remark—and so forestall A truth they'll never dare to trench on— There is no Hindenburg at all, Or none worth mention.

According to our Watch Dog correspondent, recent movements show that the lawless German "has attained little by his destructiveness save the discomfort of H.Q. Otherwise the War progresses as merrily as ever; more merrily, perhaps, owing to the difficulties to be overcome. Soldiers love difficulties to overcome. That is their business in life." This is the way that young officers write "in the brief interludes snatched from hard fighting and hard fatigues." Their letters "never pretend to be more than the gay and cynical banter of those who bring to the perils of life at the Front an incurable habit of humour, and they are typical of that brave spirit, essentially English, that makes light of the worst that fate can send." That is how one brave officer wrote of the letters of a dead comrade to Punch only a few weeks before his own death.



The French have taken Craonne; saluting has been abolished in the Russian Army; and Germany has been giving practical proof of her friendliness to Spain by torpedoing her merchant ships. A new star has swum into the Revolutionary firmament, by name Lenin. According to the Swedish Press this interesting anarchist has been missing for two days, and it remains to be seen if he will yet make a hit. Meanwhile the Kaiser is doing his bit in the unfamiliar role of pro-Socialist.

Newmarket has become "a blasted heath," all horse-racing having been stopped, to the great dismay of the Irish members. What are the hundred thousand young men (or is it two?), who refuse to fight for their country, to do? Mr. Lloyd George has produced and expounded his plan for an Irish Convention, at which Erin is to take a turn at her own harp, and the proposal has been favourably received, except by Mr. Ginnell, in whose ears the Convention "sounds the dirge of the Home Rule Act."



A Garden Glorified

Mr. Bonar Law has brought in a Budget, moved a vote of credit for 500 millions, and apologised for estimating the war expenditure at 5 1/2 millions a day when it turned out to be 7 1/2. The trivial lapse has been handsomely condoned by his predecessor, Mr. McKenna. The Budget debate was held with open doors, but produced a number of speeches much more suitable for the Secret Session which followed, and at which it appears from the Speaker's Report that nothing sensational was revealed.

The House of Commons, unchanged externally, has deteriorated spiritually, to judge by the temper of most of those who have remained behind. It is otherwise with other Institutions, some of which have been ennobled by disfigurement.

A PLACE OF ARMS

I knew a garden green and fair, Flanking our London river's tide, And you would think, to breathe its air And roam its virgin lawns beside, All shimmering in their velvet fleece, "Nothing can hurt this haunt of Peace."

No trespass marred that close retreat; Privileged were the few that went Pacing its walks with measured beat On legal contemplation bent; And Inner Templars used to say: "How well our garden looks to-day!"

But That which changes all has changed This guarded pleasaunce, green and fair, And soldier-ranks therein have ranged And trod its beauties hard and bare, Have tramped and tramped its fretted floor, Learning the discipline of War.

And many a moon of Peace shall climb Above that mimic field of Mars, Before the healing touch of Time With springing green shall hide its scars; But Inner Templars smile and say: "Our barrack-square looks well to-day!"

Good was that garden in their eyes, Lovely its spell of long-ago; Now waste and mired its glory lies, And yet they hold it dearer so, Who see beneath the wounds it bears A grace no other garden wears.

For still the memory, never sere, But fresh as after fallen rain, Of those who learned their lesson here And may not ever come again, Gives to this garden, bruised and browned, A greenness as of hallowed ground.

News comes from Athens that King Constantine is realising his position and contemplates abdication in favour of the Crown Prince George. It is not yet known in whose favour the Crown Prince George will abdicate. In this context the Koelnische Zeitung is worth quoting. "The German people," it says, "will not soon forget what they owe to their future Emperor." This spasm of candour is not confined to the Rhineland. The keenest minds in Germany, says a Berlin correspondent, are now seeking to discover the secret of the Fatherland's world-wide unpopularity. It is this absurd sensitiveness on the part of our cultured opponent that is causing some of her best friends in this country to lose hope.

Genius has been denned as an infinite capacity for taking pains; and if the definition is sound, genius cannot be denied to the painstaking officials who test the physical fitness of recruits—"as in the picture."

The month has witnessed the amendment of the President's much discussed phrase: "Too proud to fight" has now become "Proud to fight too." Another revised version is suggested by Margarine: C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas le beurre. The German Food Controller laments the mysterious disappearance of five million four hundred thousand pigs this year. The idea of having the Crown Prince's baggage searched does not seem to have been found feasible.



June, 1917.

Within some eleven weeks of the Declaration of War by the U.S.A., the first American troops have been landed in France. Even the Kaiser has begun to abate his thrasonic tone, declaring that "it is not the Prussian way to praise oneself," and that "it is now a matter of holding out, however long it lasts."

But other events besides the arrival of the Americans have helped to bring about this altered tone. The capture of Messines Ridge, after the biggest bang in history, has given him something to think about. His brother-in-law, Constantine of Greece, has at last thrown up the sponge and abdicated. "Tino's" place of exile is not yet fixed. The odds seem to be on Switzerland, but Mr. Punch recommends Denmark. There is no place like home:

Try some ancestral palace, well appointed; For choice the one where Hamlet nursed his spite, Who found the times had grown a bit disjointed And he was not the man to put 'em right; And there consult on that enchanted shore The ghosts of Elsinore.

Brazil has also entered the War, and Germany is now able to shoot in almost any direction without any appreciable risk of hitting a friend.

Field-Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave the nation a birthday present on his own birthday, in the shape of a dispatch which is as strong and straight as himself:

Frugal in speech, yet more than once impelled To utter words of confidence and cheer Whereat some dismal publicists rebelled As premature, ill-founded, insincere— Words none the less triumphantly upheld By Victory's verdict, resonantly clear, Words that inspired misgiving in the foe Because you do not prophesy—you know.

Steadfast and calm, unmoved by blame or praise, By local checks or Fortune's strange caprices, You dedicate laborious nights and days To shattering the Hun machine to pieces; And howsoe'er at times the battle sways The Army's trust in your command increases; Patient in preparation, swift in deed, We find in you the leader that we need.



A new feature of the German armies are the special "storm-troops"; men picked for their youth, vigour, and daring, and fortified by a specially liberal diet for the carrying out of counter-attacks. Even our ordinary British soldiers, who are constantly compelled to take these brave fellows prisoners, bear witness to the ferocity of their appearance.

On our Home Front the Germans have shown considerable activity of late. Daylight air-raids are no longer the monopoly of the South-east coast; they have extended to London. And a weekly paper, conspicuous for the insistence with which it proclaims its superiority to all others, has been asking: If 17 German aeroplanes can visit and bomb London in broad daylight, what is to prevent our enemy from sending 170 or even 1,700? Fortunately the average man and woman pays no heed to this scare-mongering, and goes about his or her business, if not rejoicing, at any rate in the conviction that the Gothas are not going to have it all their own way.

Considering that the "Fort of London" had been drenched with the "ghastly dew" of aerial navies barely three hours before Parliament met on June 13, Members showed themselves uncommon calm. They were at their best a few days earlier in paying homage to Major Willie Redmond. It had been his ambition to be Father of the House: he had been elected thirty-four years ago; but in reality he was the Eternal Boy from the far-off time when it was his nightly delight to "cheek" Mr. Speaker Brand with delightful exuberance until the moment of his glorious death in Flanders, whither he had gone at an age when most of his compeers were content to play the critic in a snug corner of the smoking-room. Personal affection combined with admiration for his gallantry to inspire the speeches in which Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Asquith, and Sir Edward Carson enshrined the most remarkable tribute ever paid to a private Member.

Mr. Balfour has returned safe and sound from his Mission to the States, and received a warm welcome on all sides. Even the ranks of Tuscany, on the Irish benches, could not forbear to cheer their old opponent. Besides securing American gold for his country, he has transferred some American bronze to his complexion. If anything, he appears to have sharpened his natural faculty for skilful evasion and polite repartee by his encounter with Transatlantic journalists. In fact everybody is pleased to see him back except perhaps certain curious members, who find him even more chary of information than his deputy, Lord Robert Cecil. The mystery of Lord Northcliffe's visit to the States has been cleared up. Certain journals, believed to enjoy his confidence, had described him as "Mr. Balfour's successor." Certain other journals, whose confidence he does not enjoy, had declined to believe this. The fact as stated by Mr. Bonar Law is that "it is hoped that Lord Northcliffe will be able to carry on the work begun by Mr. Balfour as head of the British Mission in America. He is expected to co-ordinate and supervise the work of all the Departmental Missions." It has been interesting to learn that his lordship "will have the right of communicating direct with the Prime Minister"—a thing which, of course, he has never done before. Meanwhile, the fact remains that his departure has been hailed with many a dry eye, and that the public seem to be enduring their temporary bereavement with fortitude.



Far too much fuss has been made about trying to stop Messrs. Ramsay MacDonald and Jowett from leaving England. So far as we can gather they did not threaten to return to this country afterwards. There is no end to the woes of Pacificists, conscientious or otherwise. The Press campaign against young men of military age engaged in Government offices is causing some of them sleepless days. Even on the stage the "conchy" is not safe.



The King has done a popular act in abolishing the German titles held by members of his family, and Mr. Kennedy Jones has won widespread approval by declaring that beer is a food.

Lord Devonport's retirement from the post of Food Controller has been received with equanimity. There is a touch of imagination, almost of romance, in the appointment of his successor, the redoubtable Lord Rhondda, who as "D.A." was alternately the bogy and idol of the Welsh miners, and who, after being the head of the greatest profit-making enterprise in the Welsh coalfields, is now summoned to carry on war against the profiteers in the provision trade.

In Germany a number of lunatics have been called up for military service, and the annual report of one institution at Stettin states that "the asylums are proud that their inmates are allowed to serve their Fatherland." It appears, however, that the results are not always satisfactory, though no complaints have been heard on our side.



July, 1917.

The War, so Lord Northcliffe has informed the Washington Red Cross Committee, has only just begun. Whether this utterance be regarded as a statement of fact or an explosion of rhetoric, it has at least one merit. The United States cannot but regard it as a happy coincidence that their entry into the War synchronises with the initial operations. The dog-days are always busy times for the Dogs of War, and the last month of the third year opened with the new Russian Offensive under Brusiloff, and closed with the beginning of the Third Battle of Ypres. The War in the air and under the sea rages with unabated intensity, and in both Houses the policy of unmitigated reprisals on German cities has found strenuous advocates. But Lord Derby, our new Minister of War, will have none of it. British aeroplanes shall only be employed in bombing where some distinctly military object is to be achieved. But this decision does not involve any slackness in defensive measures. We have learned how to deal with the Zepp, and now we are going to attend to the Gotha. As for the U-boats, the Admiralty says little but does much. And we are adding to vigilance, valour, and the resources of applied science the further aid of agriculture.

In the old days the Kaiser was once described as "indefatigably changing Chancellors and uniforms." Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg has now gone the way of his greater predecessors—Bismarck and Caprivi, Prince Hohenlohe and Prince Buelow.



The Princes and the Peers depart, and the Doctors are following suit. Bethmann-Hollweg, immortalised by one fatal phrase, has been at last hunted from office by the extremists whom he sought to restrain, and Dr. Michaelis, a second-rate administrator, of negligible antecedents, succeeds to his uneasy chair, while the Kaiser maintains his pose as the friend of the people. He has congratulated his Bayreuth Dragoons on their prowess, which has given joy "to old Fritz up in Elysian fields":

Perhaps; but what if he is down below? In any case, what we should like to know Is how his modern namesake, Private Fritz, Enjoys the fun of being blown to bits Because his Emperor has lost his wits.



Delirant reges: but there are bright exceptions. On July 17 our King in Council decreed that the Royal House should be known henceforth as the House of Windsor. Parliament has been flooded with the backwash of the Mesopotamia Commission, and at last on third thoughts the Government has decided not to set up a new tribunal to try the persons affected by the Report. Mr. Austen Chamberlain has resigned office amid general regret. The Government have refused, "on the representations of the Foreign Secretary," to accept the twice proffered resignation of Lord Hardinge. The plain person is driven to the conclusion that if there are no unsinkable ships there are some unsinkable officials. For the rest the question mainly agitating Members has been "to warn or not to warn." The Lord Mayor has announced that he will not ring the great bell of St. Paul's; but the Home Secretary states that the public will be warned in future when an air raid is actually imminent.



During these visitations there is nothing handier than a comfortable and capacious Cave, but the Home Secretary has his limitations. When Mr. King asked him to be more careful about interning alien friends without trial, since he (Mr. King) had just heard of the great reception accorded in Petrograd to one Trotsky on his release from internment, Sir George Cave replied that he was sorry he had never heard of Trotsky.

Lord Rhondda reigns in Lord Devonport's place, and will doubtless profit by his predecessor's experience. It is a thankless job, but the great body of the nation is determined that he shall have fair play and will support him through thick and thin in any policy, however drastic, that he may recommend to their reason and their patriotism. This business of food-controlling is new to us as well as to him, but we are willing to be led, and we are even willing to be driven, and we are grateful to him for having engaged his reputation and skill and firmness in the task of leading or driving us.

The War has its grandes heures, its colossal glories and disasters, but the tragedy of the "little things" affects the mind of the simple soldier with a peculiar force—the "little gardens rooted up, the same as might be ours"; "the little 'ouses all in 'eaps, the same as might be mine"; and worst of all, "the little kids, as might 'ave been our own." Apropos of resentment, England has lost first place in Germany, for America is said to be the most hated country now. The "morning hate" of the German family with ragtime obbligato must be a terrible thing! General von Blume, it is true, says that America's intervention is no more than "a straw." But which straw? The last?



It is reported that ex-King Constantine is to receive L20,000 a year unemployment benefit, and Mr. Punch, in prophetic vein, pictures him as offering advice to his illustrious brother-in-law:

Were it not wise, dear William, ere the day When Revolution goes for crowns and things, To cut your loss betimes and come this way And start a coterie of exiled Kings?

In the words of a valued correspondent (a temporary captain suddenly summoned from the trenches to the Staff), "there is this to be said about being at war—you never know what is going to happen to you next."



August, 1917.

With the opening of the fourth year of the War Freedom renews her vow, fortified by the aid of the "Gigantic Daughter of the West," and undaunted by the collapse of our Eastern Ally, brought about by anarchy, German gold and the fraternisation of Russian and German soldiers. The Kaiser, making the most of this timely boon, has once more been following in Bellona's train (her train de luxe) in search of cheap reclame on the Galician front, to witness the triumphs of his new Ally, Revolutionary Russia:

But though she fail us in the final test, Not there, not there, my child, the end shall be, But where, without your option, France and we Have made our own arrangements in the West.



It is another story on the Western Front, where the British are closing in on the wrecked remains of Lens, and the Crown Prince's chance of breaking hearts along "The Ladies' Way" grows more and more remote.



A recent resolution of the Reichstag has been welcomed by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald as the solemn pronouncement of a sovereign people, only requiring the endorsement of the British Government to produce an immediate and equitable peace. But not much was left of this pleasant theory after Mr. Asquith had dealt it a few sledge-hammer blows. "So far as we know," he said, "the influence of the Reichstag, not only upon the composition but upon the policy of the German Government, remains what it always has been—a practically negligible quantity."

The Reminiscences of Mr. Gerard, the late German Ambassador in Berlin, are causing much perturbation in German Court circles. In one of his conversations with Mr. Gerard, the Kaiser told him "there is no longer any International Law."

Little scraps of paper, Little drops of ink, Make the Kaiser caper And the Nations think.

The real voice of Labour is not that of the delegates who want to go to the International Socialist Conference at Stockholm to talk to Fritz, but of the Tommy who, after a short "leaf," goes cheerfully back to France to fight him. And the fomenters of class hatred will not find much support from the "men in blue." Mr. Punch has had occasion to rebuke the levity of smart fashionables who visit the wounded and weary them by idiotic questions. He is glad to show the other side of the picture in the tribute paid to the V.A.D. of the proper sort:

There's an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin' to and fro, With fifty eyes upon 'er wherever she may go; She's as pretty as a picture, and as bright as mercury, And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.

The Matron she is gracious, and the Sister she is kind, But they wasn't born just yesterday, and lets you know their mind; The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be, But they ain't so good to look at as our V.A.D.

Not like them that wash a teacup in an orficer's canteen, And then "Engaged in War Work" in the weekly Press is seen; She's on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee, And there's 'eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.

Our Grand Fleet keeps its strenuous, unceasing vigil in the North Sea. But we must not forget the merchant mariners now serving under the Windsor House Flag in the North Atlantic trade:

"We sweep a bit and we fight a bit—an' that's what we like the best— But a towin' job or a salvage job, they all go in with the rest; When we ain't too busy upsettin' old Fritz an' 'is frightfulness blockade A bit of all sorts don't come amiss in the North Atlantic trade."

"And who's your skipper, and what is he like?" "Oh, well, if you want to know, I'm sailing under a hard-case mate as I sailed with years ago; 'E's big as a bucko an' full o' beans, the same as 'e used to be When I knowed 'im last in the windbag days when first I followed the sea. 'E was worth two men at the lee fore brace, an' three at the bunt of a sail; 'E'd a voice you could 'ear to the royal yards in the teeth of a Cape 'Orn gale; But now 'e's a full-blown lootenant, an' wears the twisted braid, Commandin' one of 'is Majesty's ships in the North Atlantic trade."

"And what is the ship you're sailin' in?" "Oh, she's a bit of a terror. She ain't no bloomin' levvyathan, an' that's no fatal error! She scoops the seas like a gravy spoon when the gales are up an' blowin', But Fritz 'e loves 'er above a bit when 'er fightin' fangs are showin'. The liners go their stately way an' the cruisers take their ease, But where would they be if it wasn't for us with the water up to our knees? We're wadin' when their soles are wet, we're swimmin' when they wade, For I tell you small craft gets it a treat in the North Atlantic trade!"

"An' what is the port you're plying to?" "When the last long trick is done There'll some come back to the old 'ome port—'ere's 'opin' I'll be one; But some 'ave made a new landfall, an' sighted another shore, An' it ain't no use to watch for them, for they won't come 'ome no more. There ain't no harbour dues to pay when once they're over the bar, Moored bow and stern in a quiet berth where the lost three-deckers are. An' there's Nelson 'oldin' is' one 'and out an' welcomin' them that's made The roads o' Glory an' the Port of Death in the North Atlantic trade."



Parliament has devoted many hours of talk to the discussion of Mr. Henderson's visit to Paris in company with Mr. Ramsay MacDonald to attend a Conference of French and Russian Socialists. As member of the War Cabinet and Secretary of the Labour Party he seems to have resembled one of those twin salad bottles from which oil and vinegar can be dispensed alternately but not together. The attempt to combine the two functions could only end as it began—in a double fiasco. Mr. Henderson has resigned, and Mr. Winston Churchill has been appointed Minister of Munitions. Many reasons have been assigned for his reinclusion in the Ministry. Some say that it was done to muzzle Mr. MacCallum Scott, hitherto one of the most pertinacious of questionists, who, as Mr. Churchill's private secretary, is now debarred by Parliamentary etiquette from the exercise of these inquisitorial functions. Others say it was done to muzzle Mr. Churchill. Contrary to expectation, Mr. Churchill has succeeded in piloting the Munitions of War Bill through its remaining stages in double quick time. Its progress was accelerated by his willingness to abolish the leaving certificate, which a workman hitherto had to procure before changing one job for another. Having had unequalled experience in this respect, he is convinced that the leaving certificate is a useless formality.

Food stocks going up, thanks to the energy of the farmers and the economy of consumers; German submarines going down, thanks to the Navy; Russia recovering herself; Britain and France advancing hand in hand on the Western Front, and our enemies fumbling for peace—that was the gist of the message with which the Prime Minister sped the parting Commons. "I have resigned," Mr. Kennedy Jones tells us, "because there is no further need for my services." Several politicians are of opinion that this was not a valid reason. A boy of eighteen recently told a Stratford magistrate that he had given up his job because he only got twenty-five shillings a week. The question of wages is becoming acute in Germany too, and it is announced that all salaries in the Diplomatic Service have been reduced. We always said that frightfulness didn't really pay.



September, 1917.

Thanks to the collapse of the Russian armies and "fraternisation," Germany has occupied Riga. But her chief exploits of late must be looked for outside the sphere of military operations. She has added a new phrase to the vocabulary of frightfulness, spurlos versenkt in the instructions to her submarine commanders for dealing with neutral merchantmen. As for the position into which Sweden has been lured by allowing her diplomatic agents to assist Germany's secret service, Mr. Punch would hardly go the length of saying that it justifies the revision of the National Anthem so as to read, "Confound their Scandi-knavish tricks." But he finds it hard to accept Sweden's professions of official rectitude, and so does President Wilson.

The German Press accuses the United States of having stolen the cipher key of the Luxburg dispatches. It is this sort of thing that is gradually convincing Germany that it is beneath her dignity to fight with a nation like America. And the growing conviction in the United States that there can be no peace with the Hohenzollerns only tends to fortify this view in Court circles. The Kaiser's protestations of his love for his people become more strident every day.



In Russia the Provisional Government has been dissolved and a Republic proclaimed. If eloquence can save the situation, Mr. Kerensky is the man to do it; but so far the men of few words have gone farthest in the war. A "History of the Russian Revolution" has already been published. The pen may not be mightier than the sword to-day, but it manages to keep ahead of it.

With fresh enemy battalions, as well as batteries, constantly arriving from Russia, the Italians have been hard pressed; but their great assault on San Gabriele has saved the Bainsizza plateau. The Italian success has been remarkable, but the Russian collapse has prevented it from being pushed home. On the Western front no great events are recorded, but the mills of death grind on with ever-increasing assistance from the resources of applied science and the new art of camouflage. Yet the dominion of din and death and discomfort is still unable to impair our soldiers' capacity of extracting amusement from trivialities.



The weather has been so persistently wet that it looks as if this year the Channel had decided to swim Great Britain. A correspondent, in a list of improbable events on an "extraordinary day" at the front, gives as the culminating entry, "It did not rain on the day of the offensive."



When Parliament is not sitting and trying to make us "sit up," and when war news is scant, old people at home sometimes fall into a mood of wistful reverie, and contrast the Germany they once knew with the Germany of to-day.

A LOST LAND

A childhood land of mountain ways, Where earthy gnomes and forest fays, Kind, foolish giants, gentle bears, Sport with the peasant as he fares Affrighted through the forest glades, And lead sweet, wistful little maids Lost in the woods, forlorn, alone, To princely lovers and a throne.

Dear haunted land of gorge and glen, Ah me! the dreams, the dreams of men!

A learned law of wise old books And men with meditative looks, Who move in quaint red-gabled towns, And sit in gravely-folded gowns, Divining in deep-laden speech The world's supreme arcana—each A homely god to listening youth, Eager to tear the veil of Truth;

Mild votaries of book and pen— Alas, the dreams, the dreams of men!

A music land whose life is wrought In movements of melodious thought; In symphony, great wave on wave— Or fugue elusive, swift and grave; A singing land, whose lyric rhymes Float on the air like village chimes; Music and verse—the deepest part Of a whole nation's thinking heart!

Oh land of Now, oh land of Then! Dear God! the dreams, the dreams of men!

Slave nation in a land of hate, Where are the things that made you great? Child-hearted once—oh, deep defiled, Dare you look now upon a child?

Your lore—a hideous mask wherein Self-worship hides its monstrous sin— Music and verse, divinely wed— How can these live where love is dead?

Oh depths beneath sweet human ken, God help the dreams, the dreams of men!

The Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, is preparing for a trip to the North Pole in 1918. Additional interest now attaches to this spot as being the only territory whose neutrality the Germans have omitted to violate. Apropos of neutrals, the crew of the U-boat interned at Cadiz has been allowed to land on giving their word of honour not to leave Spain during the continuance of the War. The mystery of how the word "honour" came into their possession is not explained. It is easier to explain that the Second Division, in which Mr. E.D. Morel is now serving, is not the one which fought at the battle of Mons.



October, 1917.

Another month of losses and gains. Against the breakthrough at Caporetto on the Isonzo we have to set the steady advance of Allenby on the Palestine front, and the decision arrived at by an extraordinary meeting of German Reichstag members that the Germans cannot hope for victory in the field. We see nothing extraordinary in this. The Reichstag may not yet be able to influence policy, but it is not blind to facts—to the terribly heavy losses involved in our enemy's desperate efforts to prevent us from occupying the ridges above the Ypres-Menin road, and so forcing him to face the winter on the low ground. Then, too, there has been the ominous mutiny of the German sailors at Kiel. The ringleaders have been executed, but they may have preferred death to another speech from the Kaiser. Dr. Michaelis, that "transient embarrassed phantom," has joined the ranks of the dismissed. No sooner had the Berliner Tageblatt pointed out that "Dr. Michaelis was a good Chancellor as Chancellors go" than he went. Another of the German doctor politicians has been delivering his soul on the failure of Pro-German propaganda in memorable fashion. Dr. Dernburg, in Deutsche Politik, tells us that "steadfastness and righteousness are the qualities which the German people value in the highest degree, and which have brought it a good and honourable reputation in the whole world. When we make experiments in lies and deceptions, intrigue and low cunning, we suffer hopeless and brutal failure. Our lies are coarse and improbable, our ambiguity is pitiful simplicity. The history of the War proves this by a hundred examples. When our enemies poured all these things upon us like a hailstorm, and we convinced ourselves of the effectiveness of such tactics, we tried to imitate them. But these tactics will not fit the German. We are rough but moral, we are credulous but honest." Before this touching picture of the German Innocents very much abroad, the Machiavellian Briton can only take refuge in silent amazement.



Parliament has reassembled, and Mr. Punch has been moved to ask Why? Various reasons would no doubt be returned by various members. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wants to obtain a further Vote of Credit. The new National Party wish to justify their existence; and those incarnate notes of interrogation—Messrs. King, Hogge and Pemberton Billing—would like Parliament to be in permanent session in order that the world might have the daily benefit of their searching investigations. There has been a certain liveliness on the Hibernian front, but we hope that Mr. Asquith was justified in assuming that the Sinn Fein excesses were only an expression of the "rhetorical and contingent belligerency" always present in Ireland, and that in spite of them the Convention would make all things right. Meanwhile, the Sinn Feiners have refused to take part in it. And not a single Nationalist member has denounced them for their dereliction; indeed, Mr. T.M. Healy has even given them his blessing, for what it is worth. Of more immediate importance has been Mr. Bonar Law's announcement of the Government's intention to set up a new Air Ministry, and "to employ our machines over German towns so far as military needs render us free to take such action."



In the earlier stages of the War we looked on the moon as our friend. Now that inconstant orb has become our enemy, and the only German opera that we look forward to seeing is Die Gothadaemmerung. A circular has been issued by the Feline Defence League appealing to owners of cats to bring them inside the house during air-raids. When they are left on the roof it would seem that their agility causes them to be mistaken for aerial torpedoes. We note that the practice of giving air-raid warnings by notice published in the following morning's papers has been abandoned only after the most exhaustive tests. The advocates of "darkness and composure" have not been very happy in their arguments, but they are at least preferable to the members of Parliament deservedly trounced by Mr. Bonar Law, who declared that if their craven squealings were typical he should despair of victory. Meanwhile, we have to congratulate our gallant French allies on their splendid bag of Zepps. But the space which our Press allots to air raids moves Mr. Punch to wonder and scorn. Our casualties from that source are never one-tenth so heavy as those in France on days when G.H.Q. reports "everything quiet on the Western front." Still worse is the temper of some of our society weeklies, which have set their faces like flint against any serious reference to the War, and go imperturbably along the old ante-bellum lines, "snapping" smart people at the races or in the Row, or reproducing the devastating beauty of a revue chorus, and this at a time when every day brings the tidings of irreparable loss to hundreds of families.

* * * * *

MISSING

"He was last seen going over the parapet into the German trenches."

What did you find after war's fierce alarms, When the kind earth gave you a resting-place, And comforting night gathered you in her arms, With light dew falling on your upturned face?

Did your heart beat, remembering what had been? Did you still hear around you, as you lay, The wings of airmen sweeping by unseen, The thunder of the guns at close of day?

All nature stoops to guard your lonely bed; Sunshine and rain fall with their calming breath; You need no pall, so young and newly dead, Where the Lost Legion triumphs over death.

When with the morrow's dawn the bugle blew, For the first time it summoned you in vain, The Last Post does not sound for such as you, But God's Reveille wakens you again.

The discomforts of railway travelling do not diminish. But impatient passengers may find comfort in a maxim of R. L. Stevenson: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive." And further solace is forthcoming in the fact that our enemies are even worse off than we are. Railway fares in Germany have been doubled; but it is doubtful if this transparent artifice will prevent the Kaiser from going about the place making speeches to his troops on all the fronts. Here all classes are united by the solidarity of inconvenience. And they all have different ways of meeting it. But we really think more care should be taken by the authorities to see that while waging war on the Continent they do not forget the defence of those at home. The fact that Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Horatio Bottomley were away in France at the same time looks like gross carelessness. In this context we may note the report that the Eskimos had not until quite recently heard of war, which seems to argue slackness on the part of the circulation manager of the Daily Mail.



November, 1917.

The best and the worst news comes from the outlying fronts. Allenby's triumphant advance is unchecked in Palestine. Gaza has fallen. The British are in Jaffa. Jerusalem is threatened. The German-Austrian drive which began at Caporetto has been stemmed, and the Italians, stiffened by a British army under General Plumer, are standing firm on the Piave. In Mesopotamia we deplore the death of the gallant Maude, a great general and a great gentleman, beloved by all ranks, whose career is an abiding answer to those who maintain that no good can come out of our public schools or the Staff training of regular officers. In Russia the Bolshevist coup d'etat has overthrown the Kerensky regime and installed as dictator Lenin, a declasse aristocrat, always the most dangerous of revolutionaries. On the Western front the tide has flowed and ebbed. The Germans have yielded ground on the Chemin des Dames, the British have stormed Passchendaele Ridge, but at terrible cost, and General Byng's brilliant surprise attack and victory at Cambrai has been followed by the fierce reaction of ten days later. But perhaps the greatest sensation of the month has been Mr. Lloyd George's Paris speech, with its disquieting references to the situation on the Western front, and its announcement of the formation of the new Allied Council. The Premier's defence of, and, we may perhaps say, recomposition of his Paris oration before the House of Commons has appeased criticism without entirely convincing those who have been anxious to know how the Allied Council would work, and what would be the relations between the Council's military advisers and the existing General Staff of the countries concerned. But as Mr. Lloyd George confessed that he had deliberately made a "disagreeable speech" in Paris in order to get it talked about, the Press critics whom he rebuked will probably consider themselves absolved.



Parliament has for once repelled the gibe that it has ceased to represent the people in the tribute of praise paid by Lords and Commons to our sailors and soldiers and all the other gallant folk who are helping us to win the War. On the strength of this capacity for rising to the occasion one may pass over the many sittings at which a small minority of Pacificists and irrelevant inquisitors have dragged the House down to the depths of ineptitude or worse. In the debate on the Air Force in Committee, one member, if we count speeches and interruptions, addressed the House exactly one hundred times, and it is worthy of note that his last words were: "This is what you call muzzling the House of Commons." If we were to believe some critics, the British Navy is directed by a set of doddering old gentlemen who are afraid to let it go at the Germans, and cannot even safeguard it from attack. The truth, as expounded by the First Lord, Sir Eric Geddes, in his maiden speech, is quite different. Despite the Jeremiads of superannuated sailors and political longshoremen, the Admiralty is not going to Davy Jones's locker, but under its present chiefs, who have, with very few exceptions, seen service in this War, maintains and supplements its glorious record.

Save for an occasional game of "tip and run," as with the North Sea convoy, enemy vessels have disappeared on the surface of the ocean; and the long arm of the British Navy is now stretching down into the depths and up into the skies in successful pursuit of them. If the nation hardly realises what it owes to the men of the Fleet and their splendid comrades of the Auxiliary Services, it is because this work is done with such thoroughness and so little fuss, and, as Mr. Asquith put it, "in the twilight and not in the limelight."



The general sense of the community is now practically agreed that compulsory rationing must come, and the sooner the better. Lord Rhondda is still hopeful that John Bull will tighten his own belt and save him the trouble. But if we fail, the machinery for compulsion is all ready.

Reuter reports that a British prisoner has been sentenced to a year's imprisonment for calling the Germans "Huns." On the Western front Tommy usually calls them "Allymans," "Jerry," or "Fritz." But even if this prisoner did use the word he cannot be blamed. The choice was the Kaiser's when, as Attila's understudy, "Go forth," he said, "my sons. Go and behave exactly as the Huns."

Apropos of the Kaiser, it appears that a certain Herr Stegerwald, addressing a Berlin meeting, said: "We went to war at the side of the Kaiser, and the All-Highest will return from war with us." If we may be permitted to say anything, we expect he will be leading by at least a couple of lengths.

The versatility and inventive genius of the Prime Minister provoke mingled comment. An old Parliamentarian, when asked to what party Mr. Lloyd George now belonged, recently answered: "He used to be a Radical; he will some day be a Conservative; and at present he is the leader of the Improvisatories."



December, 1917.

It seems useless to attempt to cope with the staggering multiplicity of events crowded into the last few weeks. Jerusalem captured in this last crusade, which realises the dream of Coeur de Lion; Russia "down and out" as a result of the armistice and the Brest-Litovsk Conference; Germany's last colony conquered in East Africa; Lord Lansdowne's letter; the retirement of Lord Jellicoe; while in one single week Cuba has declared war on Austria, the Kaiser has threatened to make a Christmas peace offer, and Mr. Bernard Shaw has described himself as "a mere individual." We have traversed the whole gamut of sensation from the sublime and tragic to the ridiculous; and Armageddon, vulgarised by the vulgar repetition of the journalist, has redeemed its significance in the dispatches from our Palestine front. The simplicity and dignity of General Allenby's entry into the Syrian town—

Where on His grave with shining eyes The Syrian stars look down—

afford a happy contrast to the boastful pagentry of the Kaiser's visit in 1898. Meanwhile it has not yet been decided in Berlin what the Sultan of Turkey thinks of the capture of Jerusalem.



Where Russia is concerned Mr. Balfour wisely declines to be included among the prophets; all he knows is that she has not yet evolved a Government with which we can negotiate.

There is a Government in Germany, but neither Government nor people afford excuse for the negotiations which Lord Lansdowne, in a fit of war-weariness, has advocated in his letter to the Daily Telegraph. His unfortunate intervention, playing into the hands of Pacificists and Pro-Boches, is all the more to be deplored in a public servant who has crowned a long, disinterested and distinguished career by an act of grievous disservice to his country. British grit will win, declares Sir William Robertson; but our elderly statesmen must refrain from dropping theirs into the machinery. Happily the Government are determined to give no more publicity to the letter than they can help. On the Vote of Credit for 550 millions the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been invited by Mr. Dillon to make a survey of the military situation, and has replied that all the relevant facts are known already. "The War is going on; the Government and the country intend it shall go on; and money is necessary to make it go on." That was a good answer to a member who has certainly done little to receive special consideration. Not only do we need money; we need men to supply the gaps caused by our withdrawal of troops to Italy and the constant wastage on all fronts.

Mr. Balfour, as we have seen, abstains from prophecy. Mr. Dillon, who, with other Nationalists, bitterly resents the decision of the Government to apply the rules of arithmetic to the redistribution of seats in their beloved country, has indulged in a terrifying forecast which ought to be placed on record. He has threatened the House with the possibility that at the next General Election he and his colleagues might be wiped out of existence.

Tommy is a very great man, but he is not a great linguist, though he always gets what he wants by the aid of signs or telepathy. Three years and some odd months have not changed his point of view, and now for Thomas to find himself in Italy is only to discover another lot of people who cannot understand or make themselves understood. "Alliances," as a correspondent from Italy puts it, "are things as wonderful to see as they are magnificent to read about. I do, however, regard with something approaching alarm the new language which will be evolved to put the lot of us on complete speaking terms."



Lord Rhondda, who listened from the Peers' gallery to the recent debate in the Commons on Food Control, has received a quantity of advice intended to help him in minding his p's and q's, particularly the latter. In China, we read in the Daily Express, a chicken can still be purchased for sixpence; intending purchasers should note, however, that at present the return fare to Shanghai brings the total cost to a figure a trifle in excess of the present London prices. More bread is being eaten than ever, according to the Food Controller: but it appears that the stuff is now eaten by itself instead of being spread thinly on butter, as in pre-war days. Bloaters have reached the unprecedented price of sixpence each. This is no more, as we have seen, than a chicken fetches in China, but it is enough to dispel the hope that bloaters, at any rate over the Christmas season, would remain within the reach of the upper classes. At a Guildford charity fete the winner of a hurdle race has been awarded a new-laid egg. If he succeeds in winning it three years in succession it is to become his own property.

Christmas has come round again, and peace still seems a far-off thing. "What shall he have that killed the deer?" someone asks somebody else in As You Like It. But there is a better question than that, and it is this: "What shall they have that preserve the little dears?" And the answer is—honour and support. For there can be no doubt that in these critical times, when the life of the best and bravest and strongest is so cheap, no duty is more important than the cherishing of infancy, and the provision of seasonable joys to the youngest generation, gentle and simple. More than ever Mr. Punch welcomes the coming of Santa Klaus:

Thou who on earth was named Nicholas— There be dull clods who doubt thy magic power To tour the sleeping world in half-an-hour, And pop down all the chimneys as you pass With woolly lambs and dolls of frabjous size For grubby hands and wonder-laden eyes.

Not so thy singer, who believes in thee Because he has a young and foolish spirit; Because the simple faith that bards inherit Of happiness is still the master key, Opening life's treasure-house to whoso clings To the dim beauty of imagined things.



January, 1918.

While avoiding as a rule the fashionable role of prophet, Mr. Punch is occasionally tempted to indulge in prediction. The year 1918, in which France is greeting in increasing numbers the heirs of the Pilgrim Fathers, is going to be America's year. As for the Kaiser,

A Fatherland Poet was busy of late In making the Kaiser a new Hymn of Hate; Perhaps, ere its echoes have time to grow dim, The Huns may be learning a new Hate of Him.

In this prophetic strain Mr. Punch has been musing on the fortunes of the Hohenzollerns under a German Republic. Will the ex-Kaiser be appointed to the post of official Gatherer of Scraps of Paper, or start in business as a second-hand wardrobe dealer with a large assortment of slightly soiled uniforms? Or will he be ordered to ring a joy-bell on the anniversary of the inauguration of the German Republic?



These are attractive speculations, but a trifle previous, while hospital ships are still being torpedoed, U-boats are busy at Funchal, and the bonds of German influence and penetration are being forged anew at Brest-Litovsk. The latest news from that quarter seems to indicate that the Kaiser desires peace—at any rate for the duration of the War. And already there is a talk of a German counter-offensive on a colossal scale on the Western front. So that Mr. Punch's message for the New Year is couched in no spirit of premature jubilation, but rather appeals for fortitude and endurance.



How needful such an appeal is may be gathered from the proceedings at Westminster, less fit for the Mother than the Mummy of Parliaments, where "doleful questionists" exhume imaginary grievances or display their "nerve" by claiming the increase in pay recently granted to fighting men for conscientious objectors in the Non-Combatant Corps. The interest taken by one of this group in Army Dentistry inspires the wish that "the treatment of jaw-cases" mentioned by the Under-Secretary for War could be applied on the Parliamentary front. Head-hunting is in full swing. This classical sport, as practised in Borneo, involved the discharge of poisoned darts through a blow-pipe, and the House of Commons has not materially altered the method. In the attack of January 23 it is supposed that the Head of the Government was aimed at; but most of the shots went wide and hit the Head of our Army in France. Ministers have not distinguished themselves except by their capacity for "butting-in" and eating their words. Public opinion has been inflamed rather than enlightened by the discussions on unity of command, and the newspaper campaign directed against our War chiefs. Meanwhile, the Suffragists have triumphantly surmounted their last obstacle in the House of Lords, and Votes for Women is now an accomplished fact. But the Irish Andromeda still awaits her Perseus, gazing wanly at her various champions in Convention. The Ulsterman's plea for conscription in Ireland has been rejected after Sir Auckland Geddes had declared that it would be of no use as a solution of the present difficulty. He did not give his reasons, but they are believed to be Conventional. Mr. Barnes has described the Government as "living on the top of a veritable volcano," but, in spite of the context, the phrase must not be taken to refer to the Minister of Munitions, who, as everybody knows, cannot be sat upon.

Military experts tell us that this is a "Q" war, meaning thereby that the Quartermaster-General's department is the one that matters. Naval experts sometimes drop hints attaching another significance to that twisty letter. Harassed house-keepers are beginning to think that this is a "queue-war," and look to Lord Rhondda to end it. For the moment the elusive rabbit has scored a point against the Food Controller, but public confidence in his ability is not shaken. All classes are being drawn together by a communion of inconvenience. The sporting miner's wife can no longer afford dog biscuits: "Our dog's got to eat what we eats now." And the pathetic appeal of the smart fashionable for lump sugar, on the ground that her darling Fido cannot be expected to catch a spoonful of Demerara from the end of his nose, leaves the grocer cold. A dairyman charged with selling unsatisfactory milk has explained to the Bench that his cows were suffering from shell-shock. He himself is now suffering from shell-out-shock. At Ramsgate a shopkeeper has exhibited a notice in his window announcing that "better days are in store." What most people want is butter days.



The disquieting activities of the "giddy Gotha" involve drastic enforcement of the lighting orders, and the moon is still an object of suspicion. Pessimists and those critics who are never content unless each day brings a spectacular success, seem to have taken for their motto: "It's not what I mean, but what I say, that matters." But the moods of the non-combatant are truly chameleonic. Civilians summoned to the War Office pass from confidence to abasement, and from abasement to megalomania in the space of half an hour.

Turkey, it appears, has sent an urgent appeal to Berlin for funds. The disaster to the Goeben can be endured, since the Sultan can now declare a foreshore claim, and do a little salvage profiteering; but Palestine is another matter. Since General Allenby's advance "running" expenses have swallowed up a formidable total. The War is teaching us many things, including geography. We are taking a lively interest in the Ukraine, and the newspapers daily add to our stock of interesting knowledge. Apropos of General Allenby's entry into Jerusalem, we learn that "the predominance of the tar brush in the streets added to the brightness of the scene," and in connection with his return to Cairo, that "the MacCabean Boy Scouts" took part in the reception—presumably the Cadet Corps of the Jordan Highlanders. But the most reassuring news comes from the enemy Press. "It is simply a miracle," says the Cologne Gazette, "that the Germans have so loyally stood by their leaders," and for once we are wholly in agreement with our German contemporary.

If Mr. Punch may exert his privilege of turning abruptly to grave from gay, the claim may be allowed on behalf of the youngest generation, already remembered in the chronicle of last month.

CHILDREN OF CONSOLATION

By the red road of storm and stress Their fathers' footsteps trod, They come, a cloud of witnesses, The messengers of God.

Cradled upon some radiant gleam, Like living hopes they lie, The rainbow beauty of a dream Against a stormy sky.

Before the tears of love were dried, Or anguish comfort knew, The gates of home were opened wide To let the pilgrims through.

Pledges of faith, divinely fair, From peaceful worlds above Against the onslaught of despair They hold the fort of love.



February, 1918.

"Watchman, what of the night?" The hours pass amid the clash of rumours and discordant voices—optimist, pessimist, pacificist. Only in the answer of the fighting man, who knows and says little, but is ready for anything, do we find the best remedy for impatience and misgiving:

"Soldier, what of the night?" "Vainly ye question of me; I know not, I hear not nor see; The voice of the prophet is dumb Here in the heart of the fight. I count the hours on their way; I know not when morning shall come; Enough that I work for the day."

The first Brest-Litovsk Treaty has been signed, followed in nine days by the German invasion of Russia, an apt comment on what an English paper, by a misprint which is really an inspiration, calls "the Brest Nogotiations."

The record of the Bolshevist regime is already deeply stained with the massacre of the innocents, but Lenin and Trotsky can plead an august example. More than fourteen thousand British non-combatants—men, women and children—have been murdered by the Kaiser's command. And the rigorous suppression of the strikes in Berlin furnishes a useful test of his recent avowals of sympathy with democratic ideals. By way of a set-off the German Press Bureau has circulated a legend of civil war in London, bristling with circumstantial inaccuracies. The enemy's successes in the field—the occupation of Reval and the recapture of Trebizond—are the direct outcome of the Russian debacle. Our capture of Jericho marks a further stage in a sustained triumph of good generalship and hard fighting, which verifies an old prophecy current among the Arabs in Palestine and Syria, viz. that when the waters of the Nile flow into Palestine, a prophet from the West will drive the Turk out of the Arab countries. The first part of the prophecy was fulfilled by the pipe-line which has brought Nile water (taken from the fresh-water canal) for the use of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force across the Sinai desert to the neighbourhood of Gaza. The second part was fulfilled by the fact that General Allenby's name is rendered in Arabic by exactly the same letters which form the words "El Nebi," i.e. the Prophet.



At home we have seen the end of the seventh session of a Parliament which by its own rash Act should have committed suicide two years ago. Truly the Kaiser has a lot to answer for. On the last day but one of the session 184 questions were put, the information extracted from Ministers being, as usual, in inverse ratio to the curiosity of the questioners. The opening of the eighth session showed no change in this respect. The debate on the Address degenerated into a series of personal attacks on the Premier by members who, not without high example, regard this as the easiest road to fame. The only persons who have a right to congratulate themselves on the discussion are the members of the German General Staff, who may not have learned anything that they did not know before, but have undoubtedly had certain shrewd suspicions confirmed. Mr. Bonar Law, in one of his engaging bursts of self-revelation, observed that he had no more interest in this Prime Minister than he had in the last; but the House generally seemed to agree with Mr. Adamson, the Labour leader, who, before changing horses again, wanted to be sure that he was going to get a better team. A week later, on the day on which the Prince of Wales took his seat in the Lords, Lord Derby endeavoured to explain why the Government had parted with Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial Staff, and replaced him by General Wilson. It is hard to say whether the Peers were convinced. Simultaneously in the House of Commons the Prime Minister was engaged in the same task, but with greater success. Mr. Lloyd George has no equal in the art of persuading an audience to share his faith in himself. How far our military chiefs approved the recent decision of the Versailles Conference is not known. But everyone applauds the patriotic self-effacement of Sir William Robertson in silently accepting the Eastern Command at home.

In Parliament the question of food has been discussed in both Houses with the greatest gusto. Throughout the country it is the chief topic of conversation.



To the ordinary queues we now have to add processions of conscientious disgorgers patriotically evading prosecution. The problem "Is tea a food or is it not?" convulses our Courts, and the axioms of Euclid call for revision as follows:

"Parallel lines are those which in a queue, if only produced far enough, never mean meat."

"If there be two queues outside two different butchers' shops, and the length and the breadth of one queue be equal to the length and breadth of the other queue, each to each, but the supplies in one shop are greater than the supplies in the other shop, then the persons in the one queue will get more meat than those in the other queue, which is absurd, and Rhondda ought to see about it."

All the same, Lord Rhondda is a stout fellow who goes on his way with an imperviousness to criticism—criticism that is often selfish and contemptible—which augurs well for his ultimate success in the most thankless of all jobs.



Food at the front is another matter, and Mr. Punch is glad to print the tribute of one of his war-poets to the "Cookers":

The Company Cook is no great fighter, And there's never a medal for him to wear, Though he camps in the shell-swept waste, poor blighter, And many a cook has "copped it" there; But the boys go over on beans and bacon, And Tommy is best when Tommy has dined, So here's to the Cookers, the plucky old Cookers, And the sooty old Cooks that waddle behind.

"It is Germany," says a German paper, "who will speak the last word in this War." Yes, and the last word will be "Kamerad!" But that word will be spoken in spite of many pseudo-war-workers on the Home Front.

Among the many wonders of the War one of the most wonderful is the sailor-man, three times, four times, five times torpedoed, who yet wants to sail once more. But there is one thing that he never wants to do again—to "pal" with Fritz the square-head:

"When peace is signed and treaties made an' trade begins again, There's some'll shake a German's 'and an' never see the stain; But not me," says Dan the sailor-man, "not me, as God's on high— Lord knows it's bitter in an open boat to see your shipmates die."

Among the ignoble curiosities of the time we note the following advertisements in a Manchester newspaper of "wants" in our "indispensable" industries: "Tennis ball inflators, cutters and makers" and "Caramel wrappers"; while a Brighton paper has "Wanted, two dozen living flies weekly during the remainder of winter for two Italian frogs."

The situation in Ireland remains unchanged, and suggests the following historical division of eras. (1) Pagan era; (2) Christian era; (3) De Valera.



March, 1918.

Once again the month of the War-God has been true to its name. March, opening in suspense, with the Kaiser and his Chancellor still talking of peace, has closed in a crisis of acute anxiety for the Allies. The expected has happened; the long-advertised German attack has been delivered in the West, and the war of movement has begun.

Breaking through the Fifth British Army, in five days the Germans have advanced twenty-five miles, to within artillery range of Amiens and the main lateral railway behind the British lines. Bapaume and Peronne have fallen. The Americans have entered the war in the firing line. It is the beginning of the end, the supreme test of the soul of the nation:

The little things of which we lately chattered— The dearth of taxis or the dawn of Spring; Themes we discussed as though they really mattered, Like rationed meat or raiders on the wing;—

How thin it seems to-day, this vacant prattle, Drowned by the thunder rolling in the West, Voice of the great arbitrament of battle That puts our temper to the final test.

Thither our eyes are turned, our hearts are straining, Where those we love, whose courage laughs at fear, Amid the storm of steel around them raining, Go to their death for all we hold most dear.

New-born of this supremest hour of trial, In quiet confidence shall be our strength, Fixed on a faith that will not take denial Nor doubt that we have found our soul at length.

O England, staunch of nerve and strong of sinew, Best when you face the odds and stand at bay; Now show a watching world what stuff is in you! Now make your soldiers proud of you to-day!

Of our soldiers we at home cannot be too proud, from Field-Marshal to officer's servant. As one of Mr. Punch's correspondents at the front writes: "Dawn to me hereafter will not be personified as a rosy-fingered damsel or a lovely swift-footed deity, but as a sturdy little man in khaki, crimson-eared with cold, heralded and escorted by frozen wafts of outer air, bearing in one knobby fist a pair of boots, and in the other a tin mug of black and smoking tea." As for the charities and courtesies of war, as interpreted by our soldiers, Mr. Punch can wish for no better illustration than in these lines on "The German graves":

I wonder are there roses still In Ablain St. Nazaire, And crosses girt with daffodil In that old garden there. I wonder if the long grass waves With wild-flowers just the same, Where Germans made their soldiers' graves Before the English came?

The English set those crosses straight And kept the legends clean; The English made the wicket-gate And left the garden green; And now who knows what regiments dwell In Ablain St. Nazaire? But I would have them guard as well The graves we guarded there.

And when at last the Prussians pass Among those mounds and see The reverent cornflowers crowd the grass Because of you and me, They'll give, perhaps, one humble thought To all the "English fools" Who fought as never men have fought But somehow kept the rules.



To turn from the crowning ordeal of our Armies to the activities of British politicians on the eve of the great German attack is not a soul-animating experience. Indeed, the efforts of Messrs. Snowden and Trevelyan, Pringle and King almost justify the assumption that Hindenburg would have launched his offensive earlier but for his desire not to interfere with the great offensive conducted by his friends on the Westminster front. Our anti-patriots, however, are placed in a dilemma. They were bound to side with Germany, because of their rooted belief that England always must be wrong. They were bound to hail the Bolshevik self-determinators because of their entirely sound views on peace at any price. But now their two loves are fighting like cats. Hence the problem: "Which am I (both can't well be right), Pro-German or Pro-Trotskyite?" Discussions of pig shortage, commandeered premises, the relations of the Government and Press, and the duties of the Directors of Propaganda leave us cold or impatient. But members of all parties have been united in genuine grief over the death of Mr. John Redmond, snatched away just when his distracted country most needed his moderating influence. For in their anxiety not to interfere with the deliberations of those patriotic Irishmen who are trying to settle how Ireland shall be governed in the future, the Government are allowing it to become ungovernable by anybody. A new and agreeable Parliamentary innovation has been introduced by Sir Eric Geddes in the shape of an immense diagram showing the downward tendency of the U-boat activities. Other orators might with advantage follow this method. Indeed, there are some whose speeches would be more enjoyable if they were all diagrams. As for that pledge of the New Citizenship, the Education Bill, the debate on the second reading has been such a long eulogy of its author that Mr. Fisher would be well advised to offer a propitiatory sacrifice to Nemesis.



Compulsory rationing is now an established fact, and the temporary disappearance of marmalade from the breakfast table has called forth many a cri de coeur. As one lyrist puts it:

Let Beef and Butter, Rolls and Rabbits fade, But give me back my love, my Marmalade.

And another has addressed this touching vow to margarine:

Whether the years prove fat or lean This vow I here rehearse: I take you, dearest Margarine, For butter or for worse.

It is reported that the Government's standard suits for men's wear will soon be available. One is occasionally tempted to hope that women's costumes might be similarly standardised.



The German Press announces the death of the notorious "Captain of Koepenick," and the Cologne Gazette refers to him as "the only man who ever succeeded in making the German Army look ridiculous." This is the kind of subtle flattery that the Hohenzollerns really appreciate.



April, 1918.

We have reached the darkest hours of the War and the clouds have not yet lifted, though the rate of the German advance has already begun to slow down. On the 11th the enemy broke through at Armentieres and pushed their advantage till another wedge was driven into the British line. On the 12th Sir Douglas Haig issued his historic order: "With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind depend alike upon the conduct of each one of us at the critical moment." The Amiens line being under fire, it was impossible to bring French reinforcements north in time to save Kemmel Hill and stave off the menace to the Channel ports. The tale of our losses is grievous, and for thousands and thousands of families nothing can ever be the same again. The ordeal of Paris has been renewed by shelling from the German long-distance gun, the last and most sensational of German surprise-packets. These are indeed dark days, yet already lit by hopeful omens—the closer union of the Allies, the appointment of the greatest French military genius, General Foch, as Generalissimo of the Allied Forces, and his calm assurance that we have as yet lost "nothing vital." America is pouring men into France and, without waiting to complete the independent organisation of her Army, has chivalrously sent her troops forward to be brigaded with French and British units. Even now there are optimists, who are not fools, who maintain that Germany has shot her last bolt and knows that she is losing. It is at least remarkable that German newspapers are daily excusing the failure of their offensive to secure all its objectives. There is clearly something wrong with the time-table and, in the race of Man Power, time is on the side of the Allies.

Truth, long gagged and disguised, is coming to light in Germany. This has been the month of the Lichnowsky disclosures—the Memoir of their Ambassador, vindicating British diplomacy and saddling Germany with the responsibility for the War. The time of publication is indeed unfortunate for the Kaiser, who has been telling us how bitterly he hates war.



For now from German lips the world may know Facts that should want some skill for their confounding— How Potsdam forced alike on friend and foe A war of Potsdam's sole compounding.

How you, who itched to see the bright sword lunged, Still bleating peace like innocent lambs in clover, In all that bloody business you were plunged Up to your neck and something over.

And, having fed on little else but lies, Your people, with the hollow place grown larger Now that the truth has cut off these supplies, May want your head upon a charger.



And what has England's answer been, apart from the stubborn and heroic resistance of her men on the Western Front? The answer is to be found in the immediate resolve to raise the age limit for service to 50, still more in the glorious exploit of Zeebrugge and Ostend, in the incredible valour of the men who volunteered for and carried through what is perhaps the most astonishing and audacious enterprise in the annals of the Navy.

The pageantry of war has gone, but here at least is a magnificence of achievement and self-sacrifice on the epic scale which beggars description and transcends praise. The hornet's nest that has pestered us so long, if not rooted out, has been badly damaged; our sailors, dead and living, have once more proved themselves masters of the impossible.

At home Parliament, resuming business after the Easter recess, began by giving a second Reading to a Drainage Bill, and ended its first sitting in an Irish bog. Ireland throughout the month has dominated the proceedings, aloof and irreconcilable, brooding over past wrongs, blind to the issues of the War and turning her back on its realities. Mr. Lloyd George's plan of making Home Rule contingent on compulsory service has been described by Mr. O'Brien as a declaration of war on Ireland. Another Nationalist Member, who at Question time urged on the War Office the necessity of according to its Irish employees exactly the same privileges and pay as were given to their British confreres, protested loudly a little later on against a Bill which inter alia extends to Irishmen the privilege of joining in the fight for freedom. Mr. Asquith questioned the policy of embracing Ireland in the Bill unless you could get general consent. Mr. Bonar Law bluntly replied that if Ireland was not to be called upon to help in this time of stress there would be an end of Home Rule, and that if the House would not sanction Irish conscription it would have to get another Government. It remained for Lord Dunraven, before the passing of the Bill in the House of Lords, to produce as "a very ardent Home Ruler" the most ingenious excuse for his countrymen's unwillingness to fight that has yet been heard. Ireland, he tells us, has been contaminated by the British refugees who had fled to that country to escape military service.



The Prime Minister, in reviewing the military situation, has attributed the success of the Germans to their possessing the initiative and to the weather. Members have found it a little difficult to understand why, if even at the beginning of March the Allies were equal in numbers to the enemy on the West and if, thanks to the foresight of the Versailles Council, they knew in advance the strength and direction of the impending blow, they ever allowed the initiative to pass to the Germans. It is known that hundreds of thousands of men have been rushed out of England since the last week of March. Why, if Sir Douglas Haig asked for reserves, were they not sent sooner? These mysteries will be resolved some day. Meanwhile General Trenchard, late chief of the Air Staff, and by general consent an exceptionally brilliant and energetic officer, has retired into the limbo that temporarily contains Lord Jellicoe and Sir William Robertson. But Lord Rothermere (Lord Northcliffe's brother), who still retains the confidence of Mr. Pemberton Billing. remains, and all is well. The enemy possibly thinks it even better. "At least we should keep our heads," declared Mr. Pringle during the debate on the Man-Power Bill. We are not sure about this. It depends upon the heads.

It is a pity that the "New Oxford Dictionary" should have so nearly reached completion before the War and the emergence of hundreds of new words, now inevitably left out. The Air service has a new language of its own, witness the conversation faithfully reported by an expert:

SCENE: R.F.C. CLUB. TIME: EVERY TIME.

First Pilot. Why, it's Brown-Jones!

Second Pilot. Hullo, old thing! What are you doing now?

First Pilot. Oh, I'm down at Puddlemarsh teaching huns—monoavros, pups and dolphins.

Second Pilot. I'm on the same game, down at Mudbank—sop-two-seaters and camels. We've got an old tinside, too, for joy-riding.

First Pilot. You've given up the rumpety, then?

Second Pilot. Yes. I was getting ham-handed and mutton-fisted, flapping the old things every day; felt I wanted to stunt about a bit.

First Pilot. Have you ever butted up against Robinson-Smith at Mudbank? He was an ack-ee-o, but became a hun.

Second Pilot. Yes, he crashed a few days ago—on his first solo flip, taking off—tried to zoom, engine konked, bus stalled—sideslip—nose-dive. Not hurt, though. What's become of Smith-Jones? Do you know?

First Pilot. Oh, yes. He's on quirks and ack-ws. He tried spads, but got wind up. Have you seen the new——-?

Second Pilot. Yes, it's a dud bus—only does seventy-five on the ceiling. Too much stagger, and prop stops on a spin. Besides, I never did care for rotaries. Full of gadgets too.

First Pilot. Well, I must tootle off now. I'm flapping from Northbolt at dawn if my old airship's ready—came down there with a konking engine—plug trouble.

Second Pilot. Well, cheerio, old thing—weather looks dud—you're going to have it bumpy in the morning, if you're on a pup.

First Pilot, Bye-bye, you cheery old bean.

[Exeunt.



The Emperor Karl of Austria, by his recent indiscretions, is winning for himself the new title of "His Epistolic Majesty." His suggestion that France ought to have Alsace-Lorraine has grated on the susceptibilities of his brother Wilhelm. But a new fastidiousness is to be noted in the Teuton character. "Polygamy," says an article in a German review, "is essential to the future of the German race, but a decent form must be found for it."



May, 1918.

With the coming of May the Vision of Victory which had nerved Germany to her greatest effort seemed fading from her sight. With its last days we see them making a second desperate effort to secure the prize, capturing Soissons and the Chemin des Dames and pushing on to the Marne. This time the French have borne the burden of the onslaught, but Rheims is still held, the Americans are pouring in to France at the rate of 250,000 a month, and have proved their mettle at Cantigny, a small fight of great importance, as it "showed their fighting qualities under extreme battle conditions," in General Pershing's words, and earned the praise of General Debeney for the "offensive valour" of our Allies.