THE GRAPES OF VERDUN
THE OLD FOX: "You don't seem to be getting much nearer them?"
THE CUB: "No, Father. Hadn't we better give it out that they're sour?"
The report of Mr. Justice Younger's Committee, in which the tale of this atrocity is fully told, is being circulated in neutral countries, and Mr. Will Thorne has suggested that it should also be sent to our conscientious objectors. It is well to administer some sort of corrective to the information diffused by the neutral newsmonger:
Who cheers us when we're in the blues,
With reassuring German news,
Of starving Berliners in queues?
The Neutral.
And then, soon after, tells us they
Are feeding nicely all the day,
And in the old familiar way?
The Neutral.
Who sees the Kaiser in Berlin,
Dejected, haggard, old as sin,
And shaking in his hoary skin?
The Neutral.
Then says he's quite a Sunny Jim,
That buoyant health and youthful vim
Are sticking out all over him?
The Neutral.
Who tells us tales of Krupp's new guns,
Much larger than the other ones,
And endless trains chock-full of Huns?
The Neutral.
And then, when our last hope has fled,
Declares the Huns are either dead
Or hopelessly dispirited?
The Neutral.
In short, who seems to be a blend
Of Balaam's Ass, the bore's godsend,
And Mrs. Gamp's elusive friend?
The Neutral.
In Parliament we have had the biggest Budget ever known introduced in the shortest Budget speech of the last half-century, at any rate. Mr. Pemberton Billing is doing his best every Tuesday to bring the atmosphere of the aerodrome into the House. Mr. Tennant has promised his sympathetic consideration to Mr. Billing's offer personally to organise raids on the enemy's aircraft bases, and the House is bearing up as well as can be expected under the shadow of this impending bereavement. Mr. Swift MacNeill is busy with his patriotic effort to purge the roll of the Lords of the peerages now held by enemy dukes. For the rest, up to Easter Week, the Parliamentary situation has been described as "a cabal every afternoon and a crisis every second day."
It is one of the strange outcomes of this wonderful time that there is more gaiety as well as more suffering in hospitals during the War than in peace. Certainly such a request would never have been heard in normal years as that recently made by a nurse to a roomful of irrepressible Tommies at a private hospital:
"A message has just come in to ask if the hospital will make a little less noise as the lady next door has a touch of headache."
For shouting "The Zepps are coming!" a Grimsby girl has been fined £1. It was urged in defence that the girl suffered from hallucinations, one being that she was a daily newspaper proprietor. But the recent Zeppelin raids have not been without their advantages. In a spirit of emulation an ambitious hen at Acton has laid an egg weighing 5 1/4 oz.
