In England, once but no longer merry though not downhearted, in this once merry month of May, the question of Food and Food Production now dominates all others. It is the one subject that the House of Commons seems to care about. John Bull, who has invested a mint of money in other lands, realises that it is high time that he put something into his own --in the shape of Corn Bounties. Mr. Prothero, in moving the second reading of the Corn Production Bill, while admitting that he had originally been opposed to State interference with agriculture, showed all the zeal of the convert--to the dismay of the hard-shell Free Traders.
The Food Controller asks us to curtail our consumption of bread by one-fourth. Here, at least, non-combatants have an opportunity of showing themselves to be as good patriots as the Germans and of earning the epitaph': "Much as he loved the staff of life, he loved his country even more."
"No, dear, I'm afraid we shan't be at the dance to-night. Poor Herbert has got a touch of allotment feet."
On the Western Front the German soldiers' opinion of "retirement according to plan" may be expressed as "each for himself and the Devil take the Hindenburg." One of them, recently taken prisoner, actually wrote, "When we go to the Front we become the worst criminals." This generous attempt to shield his superiors deserves to be appreciated, but it does not dispel the belief that the worst criminals are still a good way behind the German lines. The inspired German Press has now got to the point of asserting that "there is no Hindenburg line." Well, that implies prophetic sense:
And if a British prophet may
Adopt their graphic present tense,
I would remark--and so forestall
A truth they'll never dare to trench on--
There is no Hindenburg at all,
Or none worth mention.
According to our Watch Dog correspondent, recent movements show that the lawless German "has attained little by his destructiveness save the discomfort of H.Q. Otherwise the War progresses as merrily as ever; more merrily, perhaps, owing to the difficulties to be overcome. Soldiers love difficulties to overcome. That is their business in life." This is the way that young officers write "in the brief interludes snatched from hard fighting and hard fatigues." Their letters "never pretend to be more than the gay and cynical banter of those who bring to the perils of life at the Front an incurable habit of humour, and they are typical of that brave spirit, essentially English, that makes light of the worst that fate can send." That is how one brave officer wrote of the letters of a dead comrade to Punch only a few weeks before his own death.
