"GAS-ALERT!"
Great Britain is said to be making progress in the gentle art of extracting explosives from chestnuts. Chauncey Depew was master of that art long, long, ago.
* * * *
"Keep the Home Fires Burning" is very pretty, and all that, but "keep the billet fires aglow" is a lot more practical.
* * * *
Broadway, the papers tell us, is now dark after eleven o'clock at night, and thinks it a hardship. Shucks! We could mention some French cities that, until recently, were dark after four o'clock in the afternoon.
* * * *
It may be set down as a plain, unvarnished, Teutonic lie that fuel has become so scarce in the States that minstrel shows will soon be abolished by Federal order because of a lack of burnt cork.
* * * *
Just think! After the war is over it'll be like going from boyhood into manhood. We'll "graduate into long trousers" again.
* * * *
Over in the States, Mondays have been declared legal holidays because of the shortage of coal. But over here, with coal and wood even scarcer, we drill on washday, whether or no.
* * * *
[What puzzles us is how Great Britain, on a diet of that warm beer,] can continue to produce tanks that terrorize the Germans.
* * * *
Mrs. Margaret Deland says she wishes every soldier in the army might see "Damaged Goods." Shucks, Mrs. Deland; we all saw damaged goods when we got our belated Christmas packages.
* * * *
Mr. Charles M. Schwab has given up his private car for the duration of the war, and will, according to a despatch from the States, "do his travelling in the conventional day coach or Pullman." We, too, have given up our private cars, and now do our travelling in the conventional third-class carriages or "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8."
* * * *
Cheer up, lads! Pity the poor chaps back home who got married to escape the army! Between Hindenburg and a mother-in-law, pick Hindenburg for an enemy, every time.
* * * *
What has become of the old-fashioned trooper who used to be able to roll the makin's with one hand while holding in a bucking horse with the other? For that matter, what has become of the old-fashioned trooper?
* * * *
"Austria Suggests Treating with N.S."—Headline.
No thanks; not now. From past performance, the chance is too good that the drinks would be doped.
* * * *
Trench coats were worn by the patriotic Wall Street brokers on the New York stock exchange during that coal-less day; as if, no doubt, to imply that Wall Street is just as dangerous as the trenches. There isn't much difference: In one, you may get separated from your kale, and in the other you may get separated from your bean.
* * * *
"Hertling Thinks England Doesn't Wish for Peace."—Headline.
It all depends on what you mean by peace, Herr Chancellor!
* * * *
Now that the Chinese mission has officially visited the Belgian front, we suppose Hindenburg will take the queue and get out from in front of there.
* * * *
It is a singular tribute to the originality of the A.E.F. that not one of its members has tried to write home that ancient wheeze about "the French pheasants singing the Mayonnaise."
* * * *
The Kaiser said he didn't want any fuss made over his birthday this year. He even refrained from making a speech on that auspicious occasion. But, all the same, there are plenty of people who would dearly love to give him the fifty-odd spanks to which his age entitles him, and who, in time, will do so.
* * * *
Now that they've started with bread tickets in Paris, they might do well in some other parts of France to begin issuing rain checks.
* * * *
The peanut crop in the States is reported to be small this year, which probably accounts for the decline in the number of pacifists as well.