“But at last, when the snows were going and the blue Spring skies
      were pale,
  Out after bear in the valley I met a chap on the trail—­
  A chap coming up from the city, who stopped and told me a tale—­

  “A tale of a red war raging all over the land and sea,
  And when he was through I was laughing, for the joke of it seemed to be
  That Hank was a goldarn German—­and Hank was rooming with me!

  “So off I hiked to the shanty, and never a word I said,
  I floated in like a cyclone, I yanked him out of my bed,
  And I grabbed the concertina and smashed it over his head.

  “I shook him up for a minute, I stood him down on the floor,
  I grabbed the scruff of his trousers and ran him along to the door,
  And I said, ‘This here, if you get me, is a Declaration of War!’

  “And I gave him a hoist with my gum-boot, a kind of a lift with my toe;
  But you can’t give a fellow a hiding, as anyone sure must know,
  When you hauled him out of a snowdrift at maybe thirty ‘below.’”

  C.F.S.

* * * * *

A GOOD DAY’S WORK.

    “He left Flanders on leave at one o’clock yesterday morning
    and was in London after fourteen months’ fighting before
    sundown.”—­Daily News.

* * * * *

    “Why can’t we find machies for long-distance raids since Germans
    can?”—­Evening News.

Personally, if distance is required, we prefer a brassie.  We can only assume that the iron club is chosen in consequence of the number of bad lies there are about.

* * * * *

On the German Naval mutiny:—­

“They may be divided into two camps.  One holds that it is not an affair to which too much importance can be attached; the other that it is an affair to which one cannot attach too much importance.”—­Star.

We cannot help feeling that these two factions might safely be accommodated in the same camp.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  A LONG-SIGHTED PATRIOT.

Aunt Susie (whose charity begins as far as possible from home). “HAVE YOU FOUND OUT WHETHER THEY WEAR KNITTED SOCKS IN ARGENTINA?”]

* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

“ONE HOUR OF LIFE.”

In Captain DESMOND COKE’S extravaganza a group of philanthropists adopt the time-honoured procedure of ROBIN HOOD and his Greenwood Company, robbing Dives on system to pay Lazarus.  Their economics are sounder than their sociology, which is of the crudest.  They specialize in jewellery—­useless, barbaric and generally vulgar survivals—­which they extract from shop and safe, and sell in Amsterdam, distributing the proceeds to various deserving charitable agencies.  In this particular crowded hour of life the leader of the group, a fanatical prig with hypnotic eyes, abducts the beautiful Lady Fenton, with ten thousand pounds’ worth of stuff upon her, from one of the least ambitious of Soho restaurants.