[Illustration: 

THE SUNLIGHT-LOSER

KAISER (as his sainted Grandfather’s clock strikes three):  “The British are just putting their clocks back an hour.  I wish I could put ours back about three years.”]

The Allies have presented an ultimatum to Greece, but Mr. Asquith’s appeal to the traditions of ancient Hellas is wasted on King Constantine, who, if he had lived in the days of Marathon and Salamis, would undoubtedly have been a pro-Persian.  As for his future, Mr. Punch ventures on a prediction: 

  Tino, if some day Hellas should arise
    A phoenix soaring from her present cinders,
  Think not to share her passage to the skies
    Or furnish purple copy for her Pindars;
  You’ll be in exile, if you don’t take care,
  Along with brother William, Lord knows where!

A couple of months ago, on the occasion of sharks appearing on the Atlantic coast of the U.S.A., it was freely intimated at the fashionable watering-places that there was such a thing as being too proud to bathe.  Now a new and untimely irritant has turned up off the same shores in the shape of U-boats.  Their advent is all the more inconsiderate in view of the impending Presidential Election, at which Mr. Wilson’s claim is based on having kept America out of the War.

[Illustration: 

COMRADES IN VICTORY

Combles, September 26th

POILU:  “Bravo, mon vieux!”

TOMMY:  “Same to you, mate.”]

Members have returned to St. Stephen’s refreshed by seven weeks’ holiday, and the Nationalists have been recruiting their energies, but unfortunately nothing else, in Ireland.  By way of signalising his restoration, after an apology, Mr. Ginnell handed in thirty-nine questions—­the fruits of his enforced leisure.  The woes of the interned Sinn Feiners who have been condemned to sleep in a disused distillery at Frongoch have been duly brought forward and the House invited to declare that “the system of government at present maintained in Ireland is inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies are fighting in Europe.”  The system of administration in Ireland is, and always has been, inconsistent with any settled principles whatsoever; but to propose such a motion now is equivalent to affirming that Ireland is being treated by Great Britain as Belgium and Poland and Serbia have been treated by Germany.  Mr. Redmond made no attempt to prove this absurd thesis, but when he demanded that martial law should be withdrawn and the interned rebels let loose in a Home-ruled Ireland—­while the embers of the rebellion were still dangerously smouldering—­he asked too much even of that amicable and trustful beast, the British Lion.  Mr. Duke is not exactly a sparkling orator, but he said one thing which needed saying, namely, that Irishmen ought to work out a scheme of Home Rule for themselves, and lay it before