***

A cheque for twenty-five million dollars has just been handed to M. Bron, Danish Minister at Washington, in payment for the Danish West Indies.  This, we understand, includes cost of packing and delivery.

***

[Illustration:  Master (after the event). “Do you know, young man, that this pains me much more than it does you?”

The Terror. “No, I didn’t know, sir.  But if that assertion genuinely expresses your considered opinion I feel very much better.”]

***

There is a serious shortage of margarine and many people have been compelled to fall back on butter.

***

A gossip writer states that one of the recent additions to the Metropolitan Special constabulary weighs seventeen stone.  It is not yet decided whether he will take one beat or two.

***

There is to be no General Election this year for fear that it might clash with the other War.

***

Another military absentee having told the Thames Police Court magistrate that he did not know there was a War on, it is expected that the Government will have to announce the fact.

***

It is no longer the fashion to regard the British as a degenerate race.  Still it is good to know that one of our rat clubs has killed no fewer than three hundred of these ferocious beasts.

***

A contemporary suggests that we may yet institute a system of pigeon post, and thus assist the postal services.  There will be fine mornings when the exasperated house-holder will be waiting behind the door with a shot-gun for the bird which attempts to deliver the Income Tax papers.

***

Two litigants in the Bombay High Court have settled their differences by agreeing that the sum in dispute shall be paid into the War Fund.  This is considered to be a marked improvement on the old method of dividing it between the lawyers in the case.

***

“It is my supreme war aim,” said Count Von Roon in the Prussian House of Lords, “to keep the Throne and the Dynasty sky high.”  Once we have knocked them sky high the Count can keep them in any old place he likes.

***

At a recent concert at Cripplegate Institute in aid of St. Dunstan’s Hostel for Blinded Soldiers, lightning sketches of cats by Louis Wain were sold by auction.  The sketching of these night-prowlers by lightning is, we understand, a most exhilarating pursuit, but the opportunities for it are comparatively rare, and most artists have to utilise the moon or the searchlight.

***

It is announced that owing to the shortage of paper the number of propagandist pamphlets published by the German Government will be diminished.  The decision may also have been influenced by the increasing shortage of neutrals.