Chapter V: Part 5

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?

GRANDPAPA (to small Teuton struggling with home-lessons): "Come, Fritz, is your task so difficult?"

FRITZ: "It is indeed. I have to learn all the names of _all_ the countries that misunderstand the All-Highest."]

It is reported that ex-King Constantine is to receive £20,000 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 _réclame_ 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.

"If this is the right village, then we're all right. The instructions is clear--'Go past the post-office and sharp to the left afore you come to the church.'"]

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."

DOCTOR: "Your throat is in a very bad state. Have you ever tried gargling with salt water?"

SKIPPER: "Yus, I've been torpedoed six times."]

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.

CONSTABLE WOODROW WILSON: "That's a very mischievous thing to do."

SWEDEN: "Please, sir, I didn't know it was loaded."]

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.

SERGEANT-MAJOR: "Beg pardon, sir, I was to ask if you'd step up to the battery, sir."

CAMOUFLAGE OFFICER: "What's the matter?"

SERGEANT-MAJOR: "It's those painted grass screens, sir. The mules have eaten them."]

THE KAISER (to his people): "Do not listen to those who would sow dissension between us. _I will never desert you_."]

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."

C.O. (to sentry): "Do you know the Defence Scheme for this sector of the line, my man?"

TOMMY: "Yes, sir."

C.O.: "Well, what is it, then?"

TOMMY. "To stay 'ere an' fight like 'ell."]

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.

THE KAISER: "Stop! I'm tired."

DEATH: "I started at your bidding; I stop when I choose."]

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."

HANS: "How beautiful a moon, my love, for showing up England to our gallant airmen!"

GRETCHEN: "Yes, dearest, but may it not show up the Fatherland to the brutal enemy one of these nights?"]

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 Gothadämmerung_. 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_.

STOUT LADY (discussing the best thing to do in an air-raid): "Well, I always runs about meself. You see, as my 'usband sez, an' very reasonable too, a movin' targit is more difficult to 'it."]

_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'état_ has overthrown the Kerensky _règime_ and installed as dictator Lenin, a _déclassé_ 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.

MEHMED (reading dispatch from the All-Highest): "Defend Jerusalem at all costs for my sake. I was once there myself."]

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."

AUNT MARIA: "Do you know I once actually saw the Kaiser riding through the streets of London as bold as brass. If I'd known then what I know now I'd have told a policeman."]

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.

THE PANDER: "Come on; come and be kissed by him."]

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."

MR. PUNCH (to the Comber-out): "More power to your elbow, sir. But when are you going to fill up that silly gap?"

SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES: "Hush! Hush! We're waiting for the Millennium."]

THE NEW LANGUAGE

TOMMY (to inquisitive French children): "Nah, then, alley toot sweet, an the tooter the sweeter!"]

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 _fête_ 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 namèd 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 _rôle_ 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?

The ex-Kaiser is appointed to the post of official gatherer of scraps of paper.]

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.

ORDERLY SERGEANT: "Lights out, there."

VOICE FROM THE HUT: "It's the moon, Sergint."

ORDERLY SERGEANT: "I don't give a d--- what it is. Put it out!"]

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.

THE CIVILIAN AND THE WAR OFFICE

I am bidden to the War Office.

I depart for it.

I approach it.

I enter.

I am not observed.

I am still not observed.

I am observed.

I am spoken to (and still live).

I continue to be spoken to.

I am spoken to quite nicely.

I am shaken hands with.

I take my leave.]

_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 régime 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 _débâcle_. 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.

THE LIBERATORS

FIRST BOLSHEVIK: "Let me see; we've made an end of Law, Credit, Treaties, the Army and the Navy. Is there anything else to abolish?"

SECOND BOLSHEVIK: "What about War?"

FIRST BOLSHEVIK: "Good! And Peace too. Away with both of 'em!"]

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.

WIFE: "George, there are two strange men digging up the garden."

GEORGE: "It's all right, dear. A brainy idea of mine to get the garden dug up. I wrote an anonymous letter to the Food Controller and told him there was a large box of food buried there."

WIFE: "Heavens! But there _is_!"]

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.

INDIGNANT WAR-WORKER: "And she actually asked me if I didn't think I might be doing something! Me? And I haven't missed a charity matinée for the last three months."]

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 Péronne 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.