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.”
[Illustration: “No, dear, I’m afraid
we shan’t be at the dance to-night. Poor
Herbert has got a touch of allotment feet.”]
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.
[Illustration: A BAD DREAM
SPECTRE: “Well, if you don’t like
the look of me, eat less bread.”]
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.”
