* * * * *

“The times” As Peacemaker.

    [On reading the heavy attack made by the “Political”
    Correspondent of The Times in Paris on the Peace Conference
    leaders, “and in particular the British Prime Minister.”]

    How like the talk at Babel’s Tower
      This interchange of tedious chat! 
    War can be made in half-an-hour
      And why should Peace take more than that? 
  All this procrastination, worst of crimes,
  Annoys the Paris Politician of The Times.

    Had he been summoned to construct
      New Heavens and a brand-new Earth,
    To cope with Cosmos and conduct
      The business of its second birth,
  He would have finished months and months ago;
  Why, the Creation only took a week or so!

    He (while the Moving Spirit wired
      Instructions from the South of France)
    Would have dispatched, like one inspired,
      A thousand details at a glance,
  Built corridors for Poland while you wait,
  And at a single sitting fixed the Bolshies’ fate.

    No seance of the secret sort,
      Had barred the Truth with bolts and keys;
    The Press, encouraged to report.
      Verbatim his soliloquies,
  Would have exposed to all men near and wide,
  (The Hun included) what was going on inside.

    Is it too late to start again? 
      At this eleventh hour depose
    A Council whose united brain
      Apparently is comatose? 
  Replace the Big Four with a Monstrous One,
  And hand the whole show over to The Times to run?

  O.S.

* * * * *

To-day in the food garden.

Peas.—­Have you planted your early peas yet?  If not you should do so at once.  Select a piece of well-tilled ground running North and South.  To find the North go out at twelve o’clock and stand facing the direction you think the sun would be in if it were visible.  Turn smartly about bringing up the left foot on the word “Two.”  If you guessed right the first time you will now be facing North.  Without taking your eye off it, drill your peas into the ground in columns of fours.  Don’t forget to soak them in prussic acid or any simple poison (this is done more easily before they are sown) to prevent them being eaten by mice.  A less effective precaution is to sit up all night near the vegetable garden and miaow.

Here is a good recipe for cooking peas.  Shell the peas.  Take a piece of butter as big as a nut, two ducklings, six ounces sage and onions and three drops of mushroom catsup.  Roast together briskly for twenty minutes.  Boil the peas for fifteen minutes.  Serve together.