Long-suffering Wife (to amateur politician). "OH, ALL RIGHT. DON'T KEEP 'OLLERIN' AT ME ABOUT THE WAR AND THE GOVER'MENT! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU'RE TALKING TO—LORD DEVUMPORK?"
THE PURIFIED PRUSSIAN.
[Writing in Die Woche a well-known Baroness, a leader of Berlin society, discusses the transformation and purification of Berlin conviviality by the War. Social functions accompanied by eating have altogether ceased and given way to more refined gatherings—æsthetic afternoon teas and elegant evening parties—at which the conversation reaches heights of brilliancy unheard of in the old carnivorous days. Unhappily snobbery still prevails, "every class pretending to be richer and better than they are—small officials, officers, landowners, all pretending to be millionaires, and doing their pretension shabbily.">[
One of the leading Prussian social stars
Opines that War, although it makes for leanness,
Not only banishes discordant jars
And purifies Berlin of all uncleanness,
But places her, beatified by Mars,
Upon a pinnacle of mental keenness,