In some ways the unchanged spirit of our people is rather disconcerting. One of Mr. Punch's young men, happening to meet a music-hall acquaintance, asked him how he thought the war was going, and met with the answer: "Oh, I think the managers will have to give in." And the proposal to change the name of Berlin Road at Lewisham has been rejected by the residents.
December, 1914.
In less than six weeks Coronel has been avenged at the battle of the Falkland Islands:
Hardened steel are our ships;
Gallant tars are our men;
We never are wordy
(STURDEE, boys, STURDEE!),
But quietly conquer again and again.
Here at least we can salute the vanquished. Admiral von Spee, who went down with his doomed squadron, was a gallant and chivalrous antagonist, like Captain Müller, of the Emden. Germany's retort, eight days later, by bombarding Scarborough and Whitby, reveals the normal Hun:
Come where you will--the seas are wide;
And choose your Day--they're all alike;
You'll find us ready when we ride
In calm or storm and wait to strike;
But--if of shame your shameless Huns
Can yet retrieve some casual traces--
Please fight our men and ships and guns,
Not womenfolk and watering places.
Austria's "punitive expedition" has ended in disaster for the Austrians. They entered Belgrade on the 2nd, and were driven out twelve days later by the Serbs. King George has paid his first visit to the front, and made General Foch a G.C.B. We know that the General is a great authority on strategy, and that his name, correctly pronounced, rhymes with Boche, as hero with Nero. He is evidently a man likely to be heard of again. Another hitherto unfamiliar name that has cropped up is that of Herr Lissauer, who, for writing a "Hymn of Hate" against England, has been decorated by the Kaiser. This shows true magnanimity on the part of the Kaiser, in his capacity of King of Prussia, since the "Hymn of Hate" turns out to be a close adaptation of a poem composed by a Saxon patriot, in which Prussia, not England, was held up to execration.
Kitchener's great improvisation is already bearing fruit, and the New Armies are flocking to the support of the old. Indian troops are fighting gallantly in three continents. King Albert "the unconquerable," in the narrow strip of his country that still belongs to him, waits in unshaken faith for the coming of the dawn. And as Christmas draws on the thoughts of officers and men in the waterlogged trenches turn fondly homeward to mothers, wives and sweethearts: