He needed no compelling ban;
England, in fact, had but to ask it,
And he surrendered, like a man,
The claims of his bread-basket."
O.S.
DIPLOMATIC NOTES.
The Latin-American situation remains obscure. According to advices from Archangel, Paraguay intends to act, though curiously enough a strange cloud of silence hangs over recent (and coming) events in Ecuador. Bolivia has decided to construct a fleet, despite the fact that the absence of a seaboard is being made a reason for sinister opposition in pro-German circles. Patagonia has mobilised both her soldiers, but her gun is still under repair.
Panagua has declared war on Germany. It is hard to over-estimate the value of this new adhesion to the Allied cause. The standing army is well over six hundred strong, and there is a small but modern fleet, consisting of two revenue cutters, one super skiff, eight canoes (mounted with two pairs of six-inch oars) and one raft (Benamuckee class). The President, in a moving address to the Panaguan Senate, declared, "The world is watching Panagua; it does not watch in vain." Señora Hysterica, the first woman senator, cast the only vote against war. "I cannot," she sobbed.
Things are moving in Mexico. General CARRANZA has summoned a mass-meeting of ex-Presidents to consider the situation, and a counter-demonstration by the Brigands' Trade Union Congress is feared. Even as far north as Greenland the repercussion may be felt. Here, owing to the new régime of blubber-cards, Eskimo opinion is in a very nervous state. Indeed, according to an inspired semi-official utterance by Prince Bowo, the Siamese Deputy Vice-Consul at Fez, it is not too much to say that almost anything may, or may not, happen in this Arctic quarter.