O not because my taste for bread
     Tended to make me much too stout,
  And all the leading doctors said
     I should be better far without;
  Not that my health may be more rude,
     More svelte my rounded style of beauty,
  I sacrifice this staple food—­
     But from a sense of duty!

  I “can no other” when I think
     Of how the Hun, docile and meek,
  Suffers his ravenous maw to shrink,
     And only strikes, say, once a week;
  If he for all these months has stood
     The sorry fare they feed the brute on,
  I hope that I can be as good
     A patriot as your Teuton.

  Henceforth I spurn the dear delight
     That went so well with jam or cheese;
  No turn of mine shall wear the white
     Flour of a shameless life of ease;
  Others may pass one loaf in three,
     Some rather more than that, and some less,
  But I—­the only course for me—­
     Go absolutely crumbless.

  So, when I quit this mortal strife,
     Men on my grave these lines shall score:—­
  “Much as he loved the Staff of Life
     He loved his country even more;
  He needed no compelling ban;
     England, in fact, had but to ask it,
  And he surrendered, like a man,
     The claims of his bread-basket.”

  O.S.

* * * * *

Diplomatic notes.

The Latin-American situation remains obscure.  According to advices from Archangel, Paraguay intends to act, though curiously enough a strange cloud of silence hangs over recent (and coming) events in Ecuador.  Bolivia has decided to construct a fleet, despite the fact that the absence of a seaboard is being made a reason for sinister opposition in pro-German circles.  Patagonia has mobilised both her soldiers, but her gun is still under repair.

Panagua has declared war on Germany.  It is hard to over-estimate the value of this new adhesion to the Allied cause.  The standing army is well over six hundred strong, and there is a small but modern fleet, consisting of two revenue cutters, one super skiff, eight canoes (mounted with two pairs of six-inch oars) and one raft (Benamuckee class).  The President, in a moving address to the Panaguan Senate, declared, “The world is watching Panagua; it does not watch in vain.”  Senora Hysterica, the first woman senator, cast the only vote against war.  “I cannot,” she sobbed.

Things are moving in Mexico.  General Carranza has summoned a mass-meeting of ex-Presidents to consider the situation, and a counter-demonstration by the Brigands’ Trade Union Congress is feared.  Even as far north as Greenland the repercussion may be felt.  Here, owing to the new regime of blubber-cards, Eskimo opinion is in a very nervous state.  Indeed, according to an inspired semi-official utterance by Prince Bowo, the Siamese Deputy Vice-Consul at Fez, it is not too much to say that almost anything may, or may not, happen in this Arctic quarter.