“So to my feet they drew and kissed my boots
  And laid their maily fists in mine and sware
  To reverence their Kaiser as their God
  And vice versa; to uphold the Faith
  Approved by me as Champion of the Church;
  To ride abroad redressing Belgium’s wrongs;
  To honour treaties like a virgin’s troth;
  To serve as model in the nations’ eyes
  Of strength with sweetness wed; to hack their way
  Without superfluous violence; to spare
  The best cathedrals lest my heart should bleed,
  Nor butcher babes and women, or at least
  No more than needful—­in a word, behave
  Like Prussian officers, the flower of men.

  “I bade them take ensample from their Lord
  Of perfect manners, wearing on their helms
  The bouquet of a blameless Junkerhood,
  And be a law of culture to themselves,
  Though other laws, not made in Germany,
  Should perish, being scrapped.  For so I deemed
  That this our Order of the Table Round
  Should mould its Christian pattern on the spheres,
  Itself unchanged amid a world new-made,
  And men should say, in that fair after-time,
  ‘The old Order sticketh, yielding place to none.’”

  So be.  Whereat that other held his peace,
  Seeming, for courtesy, to yield assent. 
  But, as within the lists at Camelot
  Some temporary knight mislays his seat
  And falls, and, falling, lets his morion loose,
  And lights upon his head, and all the spot
  Swells like a pumpkin, and he hides the bulge
  Beneath his gauntlet lest it cause remark
  And curious comment—­so behind his hand
  Sir GERARD’s cheek, that had his tongue inside,
  Swelled like a pumpkin....

  O. S.

* * * * *

The stocking of private Parks.

As I came out on to the convalescents’ verandah my brother James looked up from his paper.

“Did I ever tell you about a certain Private Parks?” he asked.  “He was with me in Flanders in the early days.  He came out with a draft and lasted about two months.  Rather a curious type.  Very superstitious.  If a shell narrowly missed him he must have a small piece to put in his pocket.  If while standing on a duck-board he happened to be immune while his pals were being knocked out he would carry it about with him all day if possible.  On one occasion he was very nearly shot for insubordination, because he would go out into No-man’s-land after a flower which he thought would help him.

“Not that his superstition was purely selfish.  Once, when he had had two particularly close shaves during the day, he insisted upon sleeping outside the barn where we were billeted.  ’I’m absolutely certain to have a third close shave,’ he said, ’and if I’m in the billet someone will get it.’

“The Corporal let him lie down in the farmyard, but a little later he crept up the road about fifty yards to make things more certain.”